For former Pittsburgh prosecutor, the new inquiry into clergy abuse is personal

Chatt, who, according to the grand jury, victimized children in at least two other assignments after leaving St. Anne in 1974, withdrew from the ministry in 2003 at the request of a bishop. The grand jury report does not address any action related to Giles.

“They were terrorizing kids,” Hickton says. “And there was nobody to protect us.”

Lifting the shroud of secrecy

The horrific childhood experience, Hickton says, informed his decisions nearly a half-century later as the chief federal prosecutor in Pittsburgh when it came time to confront officials in 2016 about a similar scandal at the neighboring Catholic diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

Hickton took the unusual action of lifting the shroud of secrecy that typically shadows the early days of government investigations. He publicly disclosed it, arguing that it was warranted as “a matter of high public concern.”

The pressure on Hickton was intense.

He recalls an unsettling confrontation with a Pittsburgh diocese official who turned a cordial breakfast meeting into a fact-finding mission.

Hickton says he halted the man’s unusually probing questions, then removed his Justice Department lapel pin to “speak as a Catholic.”

” ‘Do I or don’t I, as a member of the Catholic Church, have the right to expect that the church leadership will be more vigilant than federal or state prosecutors in identifying this problem and eliminating it?’ ” Hickton recalls asking. “It got very quiet, and that’s exactly the outcome I hoped for.”

Hickton’s strategy to pursue the church as a criminal enterprise caused the church to settle short of a federal court challenge. After Hickton departed during the transition to the Trump administration, the diocese agreed to establish a Youth Protection Oversight Board to serve for 10 years.

In its first report, issued Wednesday, the panel found the diocese “must continue to work on the culture” to ensure the protection of children.

“Much has been done, but much is left to do,” the panel concluded.

Church reaction mixed – so far

The Catholic Church’s reaction to the federal government’s most recent intervention has been mixed – so far.

Last month, dioceses across Pennsylvania pledged to cooperate with a federal request to preserve documents related to clergy abuse in their jurisdictions.

The Diocese of Buffalo, New York, acknowledged it received a federal subpoena for documents and reached an agreement with the government to provide information that was not disclosed.

In Washington, federal prosecutors launched a hotline for survivors of clergy abuse, promising that reports will be reviewed for possible criminal investigation as authorities sharpen their focus on the far-flung scandal.

The action by Jessie Liu, the district’s chief federal prosecutor, came after Pope Francis accepted the resignation of D.C. Cardinal Donald Wuerl.

Wuerl, who served as Pittsburgh’s bishop for 18 years until 2006, was among those named in the Pennsylvania report as failing to flag known abusers. The cardinal denies any wrongdoing.

The departure of Wuerl came three months after the pope accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a former D.C. archbishop who faces allegations of sexually abusing a minor nearly 50 years ago when he was a priest in New York.

It was not immediately clear whether all of the federal actions are coordinated. Justice officials declined to comment. The Pennsylvania-based inquiry appears to be the most far-reaching.

The investigation, headed by William McSwain, the chief federal prosecutor in Philadelphia, was the source of the broad document preservation request to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

McSwain’s office declined to comment on the inquiry, refusing to even confirm its existence.

Confirmed by the Senate eight months ago, McSwain, a former Marine Corps sniper, is described by Republicans and Democrats alike as an honest broker who is more than up to the task

“Bill is highly regarded as someone who is not overtly political,” says former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, who has known McSwain since he clerked for his former wife, U.S. Circuit Court Judge Midge Rendell. “He’s not afraid of controversy or taking some risk.”

The former governor says any examination of clergy abuse would be well managed by the man who once served as a line prosecutor in the office he now manages.

“There is a feeling that justice wasn’t done here,” Rendell says.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who recommended McSwain for the top job in Philadelphia, calls the West Chester, Pennsylvania, native a “thoughtful guy who knows what the job looks like from the inside.”

Toomey, a Catholic, says that although it is “excruciatingly painful” for the church to be in the sights of the federal government, “it’s also necessary that we have a full accounting and hold everyone responsible accountable.”

“Bill is the kind of guy who will do the right thing,” he says, “despite the pressure.”

His faith stayed strong

Hickton, founding director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security, says his Catholic faith never faltered during the personal and professional travails with his church.

“I made the clear distinction in my own mind between the actions of fallible men … and my own faith as something personal to me,” he says. “If they (church officials) had treated the priests as men who made mistakes, and made them account for their mistakes instead of using the power of the institution and their fear about the brand to secret their abuse, we wouldn’t be here today.”

Although priests were unquestioned as extensions of the church in communities such as Castle Shannon, Hickton says the Catholic nuns who taught him at St. Anne were “the largest influence in the exercise of my faith.”

At his investiture as Pittsburgh’s chief federal prosecutor, a special place was reserved for Sister Marlene Luffy, Hickton’s teacher in first, second, fifth and eighth grades.

“Why would I ever let all the good that she has done for me and the foundation she has built in me be destroyed by the actions of several priests, including priests from that parish who were on the (grand jury’s) list?” Hickton says.

“If I wouldn’t let it happen, why would the church leadership let it happen?” Hickton asks. “That’s the question. And that’s the question for every Catholic. It’s time to put a stop to this now.”