Grand Jury Investigation Into The Sexual Abuse of Minors By Priests in The Archdiocese of Philadelph
Spade was a lead prosecutor in the Philadelphia District Attorney's grand jury investigation into the sexual abuse of minors by priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Known within the office as the God Squad, a group of prosecutors and detectives spent two years reviewing the Philadelphia Archdiocese's secret archives file which documented decades of sexual abuse of children by Philadelphia priests. Spade's role included cross-examining Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and other high Diocesan officials regarding their decisions to re-assign priests who had sexually abused children to new parishes without warning parents of the priests' crimes. During the two years he worked on the investigation, Spade interviewed hundreds of victims of sexual abuse. "It was like working in a factory. And in this factory was a conveyor belt of damaged people. Every day was another damaged person." Exhausted, emotionally drained, and frustrated by the refusal of his superiors to indict members of the Church hierarchy, Spade resigned his position in the fall of 2004, a year before the investigation concluded, and opened a criminal defense practice.
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