Identity & Justice

The Pennsylvania prison system is putting in place new policies on mail handling, visits and detection of drones after a month in which about 50 staff reported symptoms that may have been caused by exposure to toxic chemicals.

A Roman Catholic bishop who apologized to his flock last month for the "misguided and inappropriate decisions of church leaders" is reckoning with his own role — revealed in federal court a decade ago — in the system that protected pedophile priests.

Scranton Bishop Joseph Bambera handled three sexual misconduct cases during his three-year tenure as diocesan vicar for clergy. He testified about one of them in a 2007 civil trial over clergy abuse.

Pennsylvania’s 25 state prisons are in their seventh day of lockdown over concerns that powerful drugs are being sent into the facilities and getting staff sick.

Three priests in the Diocese of Pittsburgh have been placed on administrative leave in the wake of allegations that they sexually abused minors, the diocese announced Friday afternoon.

Pennsylvania's governor said Friday he was against a proposal to compensate victims of child sexual abuse by priests through a church-established fund, saying that lawmakers instead should amend state law to let victims sue over decades-old events.

Bells tolled 737 times for more than an hour downtown this morning, in memory of those who died from a drug overdose last year.

Roman Catholic officials in Pennsylvania began lining up quickly and publicly with a key state legislative ally Thursday in backing the creation of a victims' compensation fund as an alternative to allowing victims in decades-old child sexual abuse cases to sue the church in court.

As Pennsylvania’s statewide prison lockdown enters its third day, officers and staff are busy with intense training sessions on how to safely handle the powerful, synthetic drugs that keep finding their way inside via mail and other measures.

Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel says he doesn’t know how long the state prison system will remain on lockdown. The department stopped all visits and most mail from going into all state prisons starting Wednesday, after 29 employees were sickened in recent weeks by exposure to smuggled drugs.

On Wednesday, Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections unexpectedly locked down the entire state prison system after a sudden rash of illnesses among employees, thought to be caused by accidental exposure to synthetic drugs.

The move may be unprecedented in the commonwealth—though it’s not the only state grappling with illnesses related to unknown substances.  

The lockdown came the same day 29 people at an Ohio prison were treated for accidental drug exposure, and the same week five inmates in Arkansas died of suspected overdoses.

Pennsylvania's attorney general is repeating his accusation that the Vatican was complicit in the cover-up of the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests.

Sixty surveillance cameras have been installed in Oakland around the University of Pittsburgh campus and residential areas. The cameras are in part a response to the murder last year of Pitt student Alina Sheyket in her Oakland apartment, at the hands of her estranged ex-boyfriend.

It took 50 years, until the release of a landmark investigative report, for sisters Mary Robb Jackson and Cynthia Carr Gardner to realize that the parish priest in the Pittsburgh-area suburb where they lived as children had molested both of them, a couple of years apart.

The sisters' discovery — during a long-distance telephone conversation between Massachusetts and Pennsylvania — added theirs to the cases of siblings cited throughout the state grand jury report on the sexual abuse of children by clergy within six Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania.

An encounter between a Pittsburgh Police officer and activist Leon Ford is under internal investigation. Ford, who was shot and paralyzed by Pittsburgh Police in 2012, described the past weekend's encounter in a Facebook post that's garnered more than 1,000 shares.

Right inside the doorway of Courey and Andy Leer’s house in Wilkins Township, visitors are met with a golden cross, some palms, “and then we have a little Mary holy water holder,” said Courey, 31. 

A Pittsburgh grand jury has indicted a teenager allegedly involved in the drive-by shooting that preceded the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teenager fleeing a traffic stop.

A lacerating grand jury report on sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in Pennsylvania is especially difficult reading for a church where five of the accused priests served as pastor.

Magisterial District Judge Carmine Prestia has dismissed all involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges that the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office tried to reinstate against six defendants in the February 2017 death of Penn State sophomore Timothy Piazza. 

Activists have called for prosecutors to investigate the stabbing of a 24-year-old black man outside a Pittsburgh bar as a hate crime after video emerged of the white suspect using a racial epithet.

Joden Rocco has been charged with homicide in the death of Dulane Cameron Jr. Police allege he had just been ejected from Tequila Cowboy around 2 a.m. Sunday when he started a confrontation with Cameron and Cameron's friend, who also is black, on a sidewalk. The men scuffled and police said Rocco stabbed Cameron in the neck and fled.

The Roman Catholic pastor of a southwestern Pennsylvania parish has been removed from ministry after the local diocese received what it calls a credible allegation of the sexual abuse of a minor.

Wednesday's revelation by the Greensburg Diocese comes amid growing fallout from a state grand jury report that accused a succession of church leaders of covering up abuse by 300 Catholic priests in Pennsylvania since the 1940s.

Two months after fatally shooting 17-year-old Antwon Rose, East Pittsburgh police officer Michael Rosfeld, 30, did not appear for his formal arraignment Wednesday. At the brief session, court officials set the date for Rosfeld’s pretrial conference.

According to the district attorney's office, the pretrial conference is set for Sept. 11. 

A Roman Catholic high school will shed the name of Washington's archbishop after he was cited in a sweeping grand jury report as having allowed priests accused of sexually abusing children to be reassigned or reinstated while he was Pittsburgh's bishop.

A Roman Catholic priest was charged on Tuesday with groping a 17-year-old girl and sending her nude images of himself, just a week after a grand jury reported the church had covered up decades of child molestation by priests across the state.

One month after an Avalon man was assaulted in a neighborhood bar, the community is looking for answers about the authority’s handling of the racially-fueled attack.

Former members of a Penn State fraternity are due in court for a preliminary hearing on charges related to the February 2017 death of a pledge after a night of hazing and drinking.

The hearing Tuesday before a district judge will determine if there's enough evidence to send charges against several of the defendants in the case to county court for trial. It could last several days.

It'll be the third preliminary hearing for the defendants and the fourth overall involving the death of 19-year-old Tim Piazza, of Lebanon, New Jersey.

Prosecutors say a hotline set up to get information on child sexual abuse by clergy within Pennsylvania's Roman Catholic dioceses has received more than 400 calls over the past six days.