HARRISBURG — Stephen Adams says a Catholic priest sexually assaulted him more than 60 years ago, and he has thought about it every day since.
The priest, Gerald Burns, cornered Adams in the rectory at the Church of St. Dominic in Wilkes-Barre. Adams was 11 years old, and can still picture the view he had while it happened: the crucifix the church used for Good Friday services.
“I still think, why didn't I punch him?” Adams said recently. “Why didn't I literally bust his lip?”
Burns was never charged with a crime, and continued working in various churches in the Scranton diocese for another three decades. In 1994, a woman accused him of having abused her husband in the 1950s, and the bishop urged him to retire. Burns denied the allegation but agreed to leave, and died five years later.
Adams, who requested a pseudonym for this story, keenly felt the lack of justice during the decades he tried to put the abuse behind him. It made him into an angrier person, he said, and shaped every relationship he had for the rest of his life.
But in 2018, he was given what he called “some kind of hope” when Pennsylvania released a grand jury report detailing decades of abuse by hundreds of priests, and alleged cover-ups by dioceses across the state. Burns was among the priests named.
In the wake of that report, more than three dozen people including Adams filed lawsuits against the Diocese of Scranton. Similar suits were filed all across the state.
But today, Adams’ lawsuit and those like it are in limbo. A long-sought push to open a two-year window for civil lawsuits is bogged down in partisan politics as powerful interests that oppose it spend money lobbying lawmakers.
People like Adams, meanwhile, are left waiting.
“I don't think I've been more frustrated in my life,” he told Spotlight PA. “It seems something's grown inside me. I'm not even sleeping well anymore. I'm getting older. I'm not feeling that well. And I you know, for every day that goes by, someone else is gonna die, and these people are getting away with it.”
The statutes of limitations on Adams’ — and many others’ — abuse cases are long expired.
At the time of Adams’ abuse, state law dictated that children who were sexually abused or assaulted had until their 20th birthday to file a civil suit.
In 2002, the state changed that rule to allow suits until the abused person turned 30. In 2019, the state changed the law again, giving people abused as minors until age 55 to sue.
But these changes weren’t retroactive. People like Adams remained strictly limited by a statute that had expired far before they were even ready to talk about their abuse, much less find a lawyer.
For decades, abuse survivors have pushed lawmakers to open a two-year window for statute-limited victims of child sexual abuse to sue their abusers. The issue picked up steam in the wake of the grand jury report, and in 2021, after years of intense negotiation, the state House and Senate advanced a constitutional amendment that would have finally opened the window.
It appeared the decision would go to voters, but it never did.
The previous administration, under Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, failed to properly advertise the amendment ahead of the planned vote, a baffling error. A report from the state inspector general said the mistake was the result of “internal systemic failures,” not intentional malfeasance, and the then-secretary of state resigned over it.
When state lawmakers first negotiated a statutory window, they mostly tangled over substantive questions like whether the concept would be legal. They settled on opening the window via constitutional amendment, a process that takes more than two years to complete and ultimately gives voters the final say. Passing simple legislation is a much faster path, but some Republicans feared that approach would not withstand court challenges.
These days, stated reasons for the continued delay are not substantive, but political.
Republicans, who control the state Senate, have said they will only move the measure if Democrats, who control the state House, agree to pass two unrelated amendments alongside it. One would expand voter ID requirements, while the other would allow the legislature to reject regulations handed down by the governor.
Democrats have insisted that Republicans not tie unrelated issues to the statute of limitations window. For the entire 2023-24 legislative session, neither chamber wavered.
But at least one person closely involved in the debate says the delay is deeper than political stubbornness.
Former state Rep. Mark Rozzi (D., Berks) was abused by a priest as a child and dedicated the bulk of his time in office to giving victims recourse. For more than a decade, he monitored the way lawmakers responded to pressure from the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference and Insurance Federation of Pennsylvania — the two interests that have been most strongly against the window.
Many politicians, Rozzi said, “can't do the right thing, they refuse, because they would rather be held in good standing with the Catholic Church or the Insurance Federation.”
The Catholic Conference declined to comment for this story, but has in the past said a statutory window would be “definitely unfair to individual Catholics today whose parishes and schools would be the targets of decades-old lawsuits.”
In a 2023 position paper the Insurance Federation sent to lawmakers, which it shared with Spotlight PA, it said the creation of any statutory window could “create unforeseen liability that does not exist today.”
“This is an emotionally charged issue and we sympathize with the victims of child sex abuse,” the paper concluded. “But that emotion should not obscure the consequences of this action, especially with respect to publicly-funded entities.”
From 2014 through the end of 2024, the Catholic Conference spent more than $7.6 million lobbying in the state, and the Insurance Federation spent nearly $20.7 million.
Neither group spends all its time or money focused on preventing a window for sex abuse lawsuits. The Insurance Federation, in particular, has a huge number of interests in Harrisburg, from health care to storm recovery policy.
Over the years, Rozzi said he learned which members were influenced by which organizations. Former state Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson) for instance, was worried about damaging the church, according to Rozzi (Scarnati ultimately agreed to a deal on the statutory window).
The issue is different for current President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland), Rozzi said.
“Kim Ward is more afraid that if we open up the sexual abuse lawsuits … then it would open up other industries to get attacked, then people file lawsuits, and then the insurance then has to step in and pay them,” Rozzi said.
That, he added, seems to him to be “a direct line from the Insurance Federation.”
A spokesperson for Ward declined to comment, and Scarnati did not return a request for comment.
David Inscho, a partner at Philadelphia’s Kline & Specter, estimated he’s worked on “dozens” of child sexual abuse cases involving the Catholic Church. He noted that in the years since Pennsylvania’s grand jury report came out, the issue has evolved significantly.
Other states have passed statutory windows, offering Pennsylvania lawmakers a preview of their likely impact.
“The claims of horrible things that would happen when windows were passed, they haven’t happened,” Inscho said. “Insurers haven’t gone bankrupt, dioceses are still there, schools are still there.”
While attorneys tried for years to come up with “creative” ways to bring suits in old clergy abuse cases, Inscho said, they’re mostly out of options until the state acts. He’s tired, he added, of accidentally getting clients’ hopes up for change that doesn’t seem to be coming.
“The victims have been toyed with by Harrisburg,” he said. “It becomes a football, and it shouldn’t be a football.”
In Harrisburg, there is no sign of movement.
Rozzi left the state House at the end of 2024, calling it quits after a chaotic session in which he was briefly elected speaker and remained unable to convince the state Senate to act on the window. He is now writing a book about his experience.
The state House is still willing to advance a civil window either as an amendment or as traditional legislation, a spokesperson said in an email.
“There’s no good reason the Senate stalled on statute of limitations last session,” caucus spokesperson Elizabeth Rementer said. “It already passed in a previous session but more importantly it’s the right thing to do for the survivors.”
Spokespeople for the state Senate did not return multiple requests for comment about the chamber’s plans.
One member of the chamber’s GOP majority, state Sen. Lisa Baker of Luzerne County, has repeatedly introduced bills that would establish the statutory window via amendment and did so again this session. She declined to discuss why her chamber leaders have not moved a standalone bill.
“This bill offers a potential vehicle for action,” a spokesperson for Baker wrote in an email. “The question remains what the governor, the Senate, and the House can agree to, whether an individual constitutional amendment or a package.”
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who as attorney general presided over the release of the 2018 report that named abusive clergy, also says he strongly supports passing the legislation, via either amendment or a bill. His spokesperson, Manuel Bonder, noted in an email that state House Democrats had moved multiple legislative options and said, “It shouldn’t need to be part of a political deal with some strings attached — it should be sent to his desk because it is right.”
Rozzi, who continues to wait for the legislation to pass from his new vantage point outside the legislature, said he hopes the governor tries to force the issue.
“We really need Josh Shapiro to step up and help get us across the finish line. Because if there's one man that can do it and bring both the House and Senate together, it's our governor,” he said.
None of that is satisfying to Stephen Adams.
More than 60 years after his abuse, he is still losing sleep. He waits every day to hear from his lawyer that his case can go forward, and he’s getting sick of waiting.
“The Catholic Church has got all the money in the world,” he said. “They own so much artwork, so much property, everything. And they have not done us justice. Justice has not been served.”
