CHURCH MILITANT:
A Democrat presidential candidate claims to fight for sexual abuse victims — but victims say otherwise.
U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has promoted herself as a champion for victims of sexual abuse since she was district attorney of San Francisco. Victims of clerical sex abuse and their attorneys, however, have been telling a different story based on her silence.
The website for her presidential campaign states that “Kamala has been a fearless advocate for the voiceless and vulnerable throughout her career.”
The website also highlights her career as a prosecutor in child sexual assault cases:
She began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, where she specialized in prosecuting child sexual assault cases. In 1998, she joined the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, where she led the Career Criminal Unit. She also served as the head of the San Francisco City Attorney’s Division on Children and Families.
Joey Piscitelli, a victim of clergy sexual abuse and the current Northern California spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), however, says Harris “did nothing” as the district attorney of San Francisco when he wrote to her about a priest at a local Catholic cathedral who molested him.
Piscitelli wrote to Harris again five years later to urge her to help alleged victims by releasing records of their clerical abuse lawsuits that the former district attorney, Terence Hallinan, had gathered. Harris never responded.
