PHILADELPHIA _ Freshly appointed chief of an office wracked by tumult at the top, Attorney General Bruce Beemer is rejecting a key position taken by his predecessor, saying he believes a child sex-abuse bill in Harrisburg that would have allowed lawsuits for decades-old abuse was not unconstitutional.
In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Beemer contradicted the legal view offered by then-Solicitor General Bruce L. Castor Jr., who told a Senate panel in June that he believed the measure, opposed by the Catholic Church, would be rejected by the Supreme Court. The Senate Judiciary Committee then gutted the provision, citing Castor's testimony and that of several others. The bill had been overwhelmingly approved by the House in April.
"I do not agree with it," Beemer said of Castor's interpretation of the measure, adding that "reasonable legal minds can differ" on the matter.
"Ultimately, you would think it would be up to the highest court on Pennsylvania to determine if it's unconstitutional," Beemer said in the interview Tuesday night.
Beemer's public declaration comes as advocates are considering whether to push to rewrite the amended bill in the days ahead or reintroduce the bill anew in the next legislative session that begins in January. It would potentially make it harder for Senate opponents to rely on a legal view that the top law enforcement officer has said publicly he believes is wrong.
Beemer, whose term expires in January, said he had no plans to draft a formal legal opinion unless asked to do so by lawmakers, and noted he is in a caretaker leadership role until a new attorney general is inaugurated. But if asked, Beemer said he would consider evaluating the bill and producing an opinion.
Calls for comment were not immediately returned by both candidates running for attorney general _ Montgomery County Democrat Josh Shapiro, and Republican Sen. John Raffery Jr., a Collegeville lawmaker who was vice chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that presided over the constitutionality hearing.
Beemer said he was standing up at this time because changing the civil statute was among the recommendations of a state grand jury that spent two years investigating decades of priest abuse and cover-ups in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese.
That grand jury, whose findings were made public in March, spent "months and months" before producing that report, Beemer said.
"Those recommendations were thoughtful and in there for a reason," Beemer said Tuesday. "I am supportive of what they found."
As one of the highest-ranking officials of the Attorney General's Office over the past four years, Beemer oversaw the work of the agents and prosecutors involved in that probe.
His comments on constitutionality come only weeks after his appointment, which led to Castor's immediate departure. Castor himself had been a caretaker for then-embattled Attorney General Kathleen Kane. Kane recently resigned following a perjury conviction in state court.
Castor had been in office only a few months when he offered the key testimony about constitutionality in June and had not been on staff when the grand jury released its findings. Kane had brought him in as newly created solicitor general only days after the office made public a 147-page grand jury report detailing the Altoona Diocese findings.
The grand jury probe led to criminal conspiracy charges against three former leaders of an Altoona-area Franciscan Order.
Its revelations also prompted the GOP-led House to pass House Bill 1947, whose retroactivity provision had been thwarted for a decade by the church and insurance lobbies.
Months later and under heavy lobbying, the GOP-led Senate, with Democrats lined up unanimously behind President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati, R-Jefferson,, passed an amended version that no longer contained the controversial measure.
The House bill sought to extend from age 30 to 50 the deadline for victims to sue abusers or the institutions that employed or supervised them. And because it would apply retroactively, it for the first time would have enabled some Pennsylvanians sexually assaulted as children in the 1970s,'80s or '90s to seek damages.
The amended Senate bill extends the civil statute to age 50, but only for future abuse victims. It also eliminates the criminal statute of limitations so that any future victim can bring charges at any age.
