Recently, several cases related to the grand jury report filed on sexual abuse by clergy members in Pennsylvania were filed in court in advance of a supposed deadline. This included two cases with Indiana County connections that were filed against the Catholic Diocese of Greensburg
Today marks two years to the day that the grand jury report was filed. Pittsburgh lawyer Alan Perer filed the two cases against the Greensburg Catholic Diocese along with 25 others against the Allegheny County Diocese. Perer said in a report that while the deadline is theoretically not a legal one, they are taking precautions that the lawsuits were filed within two years of the report’s release.
One case against the Catholic Diocese of Greensburg was filed on behalf of a former Blairsville man, who claimed he was molested when he was 11 years old by the Reverend Giles Nealen, a priest in the St. Benedict Parish in Marguerite in the summer of 1968. Nealen died in 1996. The other case claimed the Reverend Leonard Bealko molested a 12-year-old altar boy more than 200 times between 1974 and 1978 at the Transfiguration Church in Mt. Pleasant, his home and in a church-owned rectory in Clymer. In both cases, the litigants claimed church officials knew of the misconduct, dissuaded victims from going to the police, and attempted to keep the offenses under wraps.
As of last fall, the Catholic Diocese of Greensburg paid out more than $4 million from a victim compensation fund to settle claims with 57 adults who alleged sexual misconduct by the church.
