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Sean Adl-Tabatabai
\nNEWSPUNCH<\/p>\n
Victims of clerical sex abuse claim that Senator Harris repeatedly refused to release church records on abusive priests in a lawsuit against the Catholic archdiocese of San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Harris is also accused of taking money from lawyers representing the\u00a0archdiocese for her previous political campaigns.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0\u201clarge contributions\u201d<\/em>\u00a0to Harris\u2019s campaigns were revealed by investigative reporter\u00a0Peter Schweizer.<\/p>\n \u201cMany of the law firms and lawyers who were representing the archdiocese on a variety of legal matters \u2014 including priests that had been identified as possible culprits \u2014 gave large contributions [to Harris\u2019s political campaign],\u201d<\/em>Schweizer said during an\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with Sirius XM\u2019s Alex Marlow.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of them had never given contributions to a race like this before, but they loaded up her campaign coffers,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0added\u00a0Schweizer, who is also the\u00a0president of the Government Accountability Institute.<\/p>\n Lifesitenews.com<\/a>\u00a0reports: Harris\u2019 office claimed that her decision to withhold records was made to protect the identity of the victims. Victims and their attorneys say, however, that this is a bogus explanation. \u201cWhat she was saying was utter nonsense,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Bay Area attorney Michael Meadows to the Associated Press in June 2019. \u201cAll she had to do was redact any identifying information.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHarris \u201cbasically put [the records] under seal so that [they] could never be released publicly,\u201d said Schweizer in his Breitbart interview.<\/p>\n Harris\u2019 predecessor, former San Francisco DA Terence Hallinan, had previously planned to publicly release these files \u201cagainst the wishes of the Archdiocese of San Francisco,\u201d Kraychik\u00a0reported<\/a>. Hallinan believes that the records should be released under the California Public Records Act.<\/p>\n \u201cMy policy was and still would be that when I received any sort of materials like that they would become public records,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Hallinan to San Francisco Weekly in 2005. \u201cThose are materials that should be brought out to the public.\u201d<\/p>\n Schweizer\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in his interview with Marlow that as DA responsible for all prosecutions in the San Francisco area, \u201cBetween 2004 and 2011, [Harris] did not prosecute a single case of priests\u2019 sexual abuse \u2013 period.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo put that in the context of how stunning that is, if you look at the top 50 metropolitan areas in the United States at that time, all 50 prosecuted at least one case, the sole exception being Kamala Harris in San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n Rick Simons, attorney and court-appointed coordinator for clergy abuse cases filed in Nothern California, noted that Harris was also atypical within the California Bay area for her refusal to assist with sex abuse cases. \u201cOf all the DAs in the Bay Area, she\u2019s the only one who wouldn\u2019t cooperate with us,\u201d Simons said.<\/p>\n Joey Piscitelli is one of the survivors of abuse by priests within the San Francisco jurisdiction. He was molested multiple times by a priest while he attended Salesian High School.<\/p>\n \u201cI just gave up on Catholicism. I gave up on God. I lost all sense of spirituality,\u201d said Piscitelli\u00a0in an exclusive interview\u00a0<\/a>with The Intercept, shared in June of 2019.<\/p>\n When Harris became San Francisco DA, Piscitelli said he wrote a letter to her asking for help or accessibility to the file of his abuser. \u201cI didn\u2019t get any response,\u201d he\u00a0said<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2010, when Harris was running for state attorney general and \u201chighlighting her work for victims of sexual abuse,\u201d Piscitelli wrote her a second letter \u201curging her to release records on accused clergy to help other alleged victims who were filing lawsuits.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe all know you can redact the names of the children from the documents,\u201d he wrote. \u201cNobody is being fooled.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt about the same time, the San Francisco Weekly renewed a previous public records request for the church documents on sexual abuse.\u201d Harris remained obstinate in her refusal to release them, continuing to claim that it was in order to protect the identities of the victims.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a flat-out insult,\u201d said Piscitelli.<\/p>\n Schweizer noted in his Breitbart interview, \u201cMany of the law firms and lawyers who were representing the archdiocese on a variety of legal matters \u2014 including priests that had been identified as possible culprits \u2014 gave large contributions [to Harris\u2019s political campaign]. Some of them had never given contributions to a race like this before, but they loaded up her campaign coffers.\u201d<\/p>\n Harris\u2019 campaign has since made a statement to the Associated Press insisting that she is a \u201cstaunch advocate\u201d of sex abuse victims. She has remained silent about protests that she has helped cover\u00a0up sex abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n