Sitting onstage in an echoey historic synagogue, next to a U.S. senator and a cardboard cutout of his newly released memoir, Gov. Josh Shapiro reflected on the Pennsylvanians who give him hope.
As he had in other stops on his book tour up and down the East Coast, Shapiro often referred to his book’s title, Where We Keep The Light, and the ways he finds hope in the “extraordinary impact” of Pennsylvanians. Among them, he said, were those who were sexually abused by Catholic priests in crimes covered up by the church until they were illuminated by the victims’ unrelenting quest for justice.
In his book, Shapiro details his work as Pennsylvania attorney general to compile and release a bombshell grand jury report that in 2018 revealed thousands of cases of abuse by priests across the state.
“I find hope in the people I met who were abused over years and years and years,” Shapiro told U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) last month at an event at Sixth and I, a synagogue in Washington, “who still had the courage to show up in a grand jury room to testify and to challenge me to do something to make sure we righted a wrong and brought justice to them.”
The nearly 900-page report was lauded as the most comprehensive review of clergy abuse across a single state and prompted new laws clarifying penalties for failure to report abuse and allowing survivors more time to pursue criminal or civil cases against their abusers.
But a key step in delivering justice to those survivors — establishing a two-year window for the filing of lawsuits over decades-old abuse that falls outside the statute of limitations under existing law — remains unfinished.
The proposal has become one of the most fraught issues in Harrisburg. After a devastating clerical error by Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration killed a proposed constitutional amendment in 2021, lawmakers have been unable to come together on a new path forward. Republicans who control the state Senate have tied the proposal to policies Democrats will not support. All the while, the Catholic Church and the insurance industry have lobbied hard against it.
Nearly a dozen interviews with survivors, their family members, and advocates reveal a deep frustration with the inaction in Harrisburg. Even as Shapiro renews calls for the Senate to act, survivors are divided over whether he has done enough to use his power as governor to advocate for them.
A key pledge in Shapiro’s bid for reelection — and his pitch to a national audience — is that he can “get stuff done” by working across the aisle. But some abuse survivors in Pennsylvania say the unfinished business in getting justice for them brings that record into question.
“He got to where he’s at on the back of victims and survivors, and now he’s forgotten,” said Mike McIlmail, the father of a clergy abuse victim, Sean McIlmail, who died of an overdose shortly before he was supposed to testify in a criminal case against his alleged abuser.
Shapiro, his spokesperson Will Simons said, has fought for survivors “publicly and in legislative negotiations” since 2018. He has promised to sign any bill that reaches his desk establishing the window.
With a reelection campaign underway and his eyes on flipping the state Senate, the governor renewed that fight earlier this month. He used his budget address to blame Senate Republicans for the inaction thus far.
“Stop cowering to the special interests, like insurance companies and lobbyists for the Catholic Church,” he said, his voice thundering in the House chamber. “Stop tying justice for abused kids to your pet political projects. And start listening to victims.”
Years of delay
Pennsylvania’s extensive investigation, which Shapiro inherited when he became attorney general in 2017, chronicled more than 1,000 cases of abuse by more than 300 priests across the state dating back to the 1940s.
For most of the cases in the report, the statute of limitations had passed, leaving no legal recourse for survivors.
The report proposed that lawmakers create a two-year window to allow the filing of civil suits over cases that happened years, if not decades, ago. Despite Shapiro’s advocacy since releasing the grand jury report, the proposal has been trapped in a stalemate for years.
Pennsylvania trails more than 30 other states that have approved similar legislation.
“It’s maddening to have people say, ‘We’re committed to this, this is going to happen, we’re committed to it,’ from both sides of the political spectrum and nothing ever gets done,” said Jay Sefton, who says he was abused by a priest in Havertown as a middle schooler in the 1980s. “It does start to feel like these are lives being used as its own sort of theater.”
Speaking to journalists in Washington days before he targeted Republicans in his budget address, Shapiro tied the window’s prospects to Democrats’ ability to win the state Senate for the first time in more than three decades.
“I’m confident with a Democratic Senate that will be one of the first bills they put on my desk,” Shapiro said.
In an interview, Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland) noted that the GOP-controlled Senate had approved a constitutional amendment to establish the window several times before, although it ultimately failed to ever reach the voters.
She declined to say whether the state Senate would take up the amendment up this year but said creating the window through legislation, as Shapiro requested, would be unconstitutional.
She accused the governor of using survivors to score political points as he tries to raise his profile for his reelection this year and rumored 2028 presidential ambitions.
“He has decided that he’s going to be moral instead of follow the law. Look at his record in his own office,” Ward said, arguing Shapiro has a track record of fighting for some survivors but not others. She pointed to his office’s handling of sexual harassment allegations brought against a former top staffer and close ally. Documents showed that complaints about the staffer were made months before his abrupt resignation.
For some clergy abuse survivors, the blame lands squarely on Ward and her Republican allies as they insist on a constitutional amendment, which requires two votes by both the House and Senate along with a ballot measure.
“It’s the Republicans that are blocking it, and I think they’re blocking it because of the church,” said Julianne Bortz, a survivor who testified before the grand jury and whose experience was featured in the report.
Debate among survivors
Despite Shapiro’s recent statements, there is a sense among some survivors that lawmakers, and Shapiro, have forgotten about them.
Former state House Speaker Mark Rozzi, a Berks County Democrat and clergy abuse survivor, said Shapiro “betrayed” survivors and should be playing “hardball” with the Senate to ensure that the bill makes it to his desk.
“Talk is cheap. Unless you come to the table and cut a deal, nothing else gets done,” Rozzi said.
Advocates have spent years pushing lawmakers in Harrisburg and have grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of movement.
“We, being the victims, have always held our end of the bargain. Always. We’ve always shown up when we’ve asked to, we’ve testified when we were asked to, we interviewed, we discussed the worst moments of our lives when asked,” said Shaun Dougherty, who said he was abused by an Altoona-Johnstown priest.
Now, he said, it’s the governor’s turn to get the work done.
Former State Rep. Bill Wachob, a Democrat who worked in politics after leaving elected office in the 1980s, is convinced the governor could make it happen through negotiations if he wanted.
“He and his team have made a calculated political decision that they have gotten as much mileage out of this issue as they’re going to get and they’re not doing anything more,” Wachob said.
In Shapiro’s memoir, however, he wrote he expected that going up against the Catholic Church in pursuing the 2018 report “was likely the end of the road for me politically.”
“I’d made my peace with being a one term Attorney General, if it meant that I could put my head on the pillow at night knowing I did my job and made good for these victims,” he wrote.
Since Shapiro became governor in 2023, his efforts to fight for survivors have been waylaid by an increasingly tense relationship with the GOP-controlled Senate, as evidenced by last year’s nearly five-month bitter budget impasse.
“I have no doubt that the governor has been doing what he can,” said Marci Hamilton, the founder of Child USA, which advocates for child sex abuse victims. She blamed the challenges in reaching a deal on Harrisburg’s partisan dynamics.
Recent criticism of Shapiro has driven division within the survivor community in recent weeks, said Mary McHale, a survivor who was featured in a 2022 Shapiro campaign ad.
“He cares. But he also has a state to run. This can’t be the No. 1 issue,” she said.
Diana Vojtasek, who said she was abused by the same Allentown priest as McHale, said she worries frustration is being misdirected at Shapiro instead of Republicans.
“I just don’t see the value in attacking the one who has vowed publicly that he will sign this legislation for us as soon as it’s across his desk,” she said.
Could progress come this year?
Advocates are hopeful that the national bipartisan effort to force President Donald Trump’s administration to release FBI files related to serial abuser and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein may spur new motivation to protect abuse victims in the state.
“What the Epstein transparency act showed us is we are finally at a point where the protection of sexual abuse victims is nonpartisan,” Hamilton said. “I fully expect to see that that understanding for victims will happen in Harrisburg.”
Rep. Nathan Davidson, a Dauphin County Democrat who introduced the House legislation to create the window, has scheduled hearings in April to bring renewed attention to the issue.
Sefton, who said he was abused as a middle schooler in Havertown in the 1980s, will perform a one-man show about his experience in a theater just steps from the state Capitol the week of the hearings.
He is done hoping lawmakers will establish the window but said it would make the state safer if they did.
“Nobody is going to give anyone their childhood back. It can’t happen,” Sefton said.
“There’s always going to be a part of me that’s filled with some rage about people blocking the energy here. If that were to go through, it’s a piece of energy that gets finally freed up.”
