Report Finds 100 Priests in One City Ran Horrific Pedophile Ring, As Gov’t Looked the Other Way

 Pittsburgh, PA – As a scathing grand jury report reveals that  hundreds of Catholic priests in the state of Pennsylvania sexually  abused young children, a portion focuses specifically on Pittsburgh  where nearly 100 priests are accused of running a pedophile ring where  they helped each other prey on helpless children with no oversight. The report claims that at least 99 priests in the Pittsburgh Diocese  were involved in the pedophile ring—nine of whom were not named—and they  received help from local officials who refused to explore  investigations into the abuse because it was considered “bad publicity”  for the Catholic Church. 

The priests are accused of working together in a predatory ring that was ongoing for years in which they “manufactured  child pornography, shared intelligence on victims and gave large gold  crosses to certain boys to mark them as already being ‘groomed,’ for  abuse,” according to a report from Penn Live. 

The accusations have been around for decades, and one of the earliest  reports dates back to 1964 when a child attempted to report the  horrific abuse he endured at the hands of a priest in his church, and  former Beaver County District Attorney Robert Masters shut down the  investigation and insisted that the church needed to handle it from  within. 

The church did handle it—by simply sending the accused pedophile,  Father Ernest Paone, to a different diocese where he continued in his  career and was later given direct access to young boys again. 

The  accusations from 1964 were not the first time Paone had been called out  either, and the report from Penn Live claimed that “church officials  had extensive knowledge of Paone’s sexual conduct with children as  early as 1962 and questions about his ‘emotional and physical health’ as  early as the 1950s when he was in seminary.” Unfortunately, Paone’s story is not unique, and the Catholic Church  has a disturbing history of looking the other way and blindly  reassigning pedophile priests who had been accused of sexually abusing  children and choosing to continue to give them access to vulnerable  children.

 The latest grand jury report looks at six of the eight Catholic dioceses in the state of Pennsylvania, and it accuses more than 300 priests  of engaging in sexually abusing children. That number does not even  begin to cover the hundreds of other priests and church leaders who  helped to cover up the abuse, in the name of “protecting” the Catholic  Church’s image. 

The report lists more than 1,000 victims, which is a  low estimate, as there are likely thousands of victims whose pleas for  help were never heard or were blatantly ignored by people in power. As  the New York Times noted, the horrific abuse carried out by the priests was shown in a number of forms that affected both young boys and girls: 

“The report, which covered six of the state’s eight  Catholic dioceses and found more than 1,000 identifiable victims, is the  broadest examination yet by a government agency in the United States of  child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The report said there are  likely thousands more victims whose records were lost or who were too  afraid to come forward. It catalogs horrific instances of abuse: a  priest who raped a young girl in the hospital after she had her tonsils  out; a victim tied up and whipped with leather straps by a priest; and  another priest who was allowed to stay in ministry after impregnating a  young girl and arranging for her to have an abortion.”

While the Catholic Church has since attempted to claim that the cases  were isolated incidents, the report from Penn Live revealed that as  many as 100 priests in Pittsburgh worked together and helped each other  prey on young children.

 Early accusations of the pedophile ring occurred  in the 1970s when a boy claimed he was introduced to a group of priests  who told him to remove his clothes so that they could take photos of  him and add those to their collection. 

In addition to manufacturing child pornography, the priests have also  been accused of using signals to show one another which boys had  already been victims of sexual abuse and would be easy targets. The  report claimed that they did this by gifting the victims with special  gold cross necklaces. 

The details of abuse are horrific but as uncomfortable as it makes  many members of the public when they hear about the rampant abuse that  has been ongoing for decades, it was that much worse for the helpless  victims who had their innocence stripped from them and were ridiculed  by their elders if they attempted to seek out help. This latest grand  jury report serves as a semblance of hope that a small percentage of the  victims may finally receive some form of justice.