Altoona man's stand gave hope to abuse victims

Long before investigators from the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office descended on the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, George Foster was busy documenting a pattern of child sexual abuse among the diocese's priests.

Attorney General Kathleen Kane called Foster, a lifelong Catholic and father of six, a hero to the victims Tuesday when she released a grand jury report detailing decades of rampant sexual abuse that harmed hundreds of children across the region. Foster's work became part of the investigation that uncovered the 40-year cover-up.

Foster, who began looking into the rumors a decade earlier and kept boxes of documents detailing the abuse, said Kane might have exaggerated his role in uncovering the scandal.

“I think God brought this to a conclusion,” he said. “Hopefully, this is God revealing all of this so the church has the gumption to say to our priests, ‘Be celibate or leave the priesthood.' ”

Foster, 55, of Altoona said he was pulled into the controversy after he wrote an op-ed for a local newspaper 12 years ago decrying child sexual abuse after the civil trial of a priest who was sued for sexual abuse. Suddenly, victims began showing up at his office and calling him.

“They said, ‘You're not afraid to stand up to the church.' ... It just snowballed,” he said.

Later, Foster said he read the transcript of the trial, which had been sealed for years, and was aghast to find then-Bishop James Hogan's statement that sexual abuse was so rampant in the diocese that he didn't know what to do about it. He was even more shocked to find that priests mentioned in the transcript as abusers were still serving churches in the diocese where he grew up.

An executive with the regional office of Lamar Advertising, Foster said he loves the church, attends Mass as often as he can and hopes this will bring about lasting change.

“I'm a vocal, outspoken critic of things I think are wrong with the church. The moral authority of the Catholic Church is not supposed to be the Attorney General's Office,” he said.

Debra Erdley is a staff writer for the Tribune-Review.