Suit Charges Catholic Church With Defamation

The Morning Call yesterday reported on a lawsuit filed in a Pennsylvania state trial court by Juliann Bortz based on information which she learned for the first time from the recently released Pennsylvania state grand jury report on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.  The lawsuit, alleging defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, claims that Church officials gathered “irrelevant, unrelated [or] false ‘dirt’ ” on Bortz to discredit her reports of abuse by a priest.