“If you are listening to this news conference, and you know of sexual abuse being committed by a priest or a member of clergy against yourself, or anyone else, please call us,” Shapiro implored viewers.
Since then, according to Pennsylvania officials, a cascade of more than 400 calls has rolled in to the clergy-abuse hotline.
The attorney general’s office has been scrambling to keep up, pulling in specially trained investigators from other departments to handle the deluge, according to Joe Grace, a spokesman for Shapiro.
“We’ve deployed agents from our child predator section and brought them over to answer and respond to these calls that are coming in to the hotline,” said Grace, noting that the surge in calls is the largest officials have seen since the hotline was launched two years ago.
The nearly 900-page searing grand jury report has not just reawakened the stories of people from Pennsylvania. In San Francisco, Melanie Sakoda with the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said the report produced a measurable uptick in call volume to the group’s national hotline.
“Were we prepared for it? No,” Sakoda said. “We’ve been caught a little bit short-handed.”
Usually, the group’s hotline receives a handful of calls a day. Shortly after the grand jury report, Sakoda was trying to respond to some 22 calls — and that was just the morning’s volume.