We have caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers…
"PHILADELPHIA D.A. COMES UP EMPTY," is Bill Donohue's response to the recently released grand jury investigation of sexual abuse in the Philadelphia archdiocese:
The incredible amount of time and money that Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham has wasted in her fanatical crusade against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is just cause for her being thrown out of office. After all is said and done, she has come up empty: not a single priest will be prosecuted for any alleged crime. And she knew this from the get-go…
In other words, Abraham wants us to believe that many years ago (decades ago?) there were priests who molested kids she can't identify. Other alleged victims moved away and can't be found (perhaps they're hiding from her)…
Some will say she is heroic simply because she successfully named some priests who apparently were molesters. But it is not an act of heroism to select one institution out of many for an investigation that was destined to fail. It's an act of exploitation.
Well that's one way of describing how much stuff Abrams came up with. (Full coverage here.) Take a gander at how many of the 63 priests mentioned in the report are under some kind of administrative discipline. (The Philly report also makes it difficult for Wild Bill to use his favorite tactic of referring to the "homosexual priests" scandal—one of the offenders supposedly took his 11-year-old girlfriend to get an abortion.)
But Donohue's got a point. I'd have more respect for his objections if he'd spoken up when the hot-potato priest Paul Shanley was abandoned by his bosses and railroaded on "recovered memory" testimony, but it's a damn good question whether a D.A. should be spending time and taxpayer money on an investigation of crimes that are well past the statute of limitations. And the obvious motive here—to drum up public support for yet another extension of the statute of limitations—strikes me as a pretty clear example of a political prosecution.
Matt Welch shouts "You're outta order" at glory-hound grand jury investigations here and here.