More than 270 Catholic clerics abused nearly 1,000 children in Massachusetts, AG report says
What they say: “We deeply understand that behind every number is a child whose safety has been violated, a family who has been transformed, and a survivor who has carried the trauma of this abuse for years, and in many cases, decades,” Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell (D-D) wrote in the report.
Catch up quickly: The Massachusetts AG’s office began its investigation in 2019, examining the Church’s responses to abuse allegations spanning more than six decades.
- Boston Globe journalists exposed widespread abuse and institutional cover-ups in the Archdiocese of Boston in the early 2000s.
- Wednesday’s report sought to provide the first comparable public account of what happened in the Roman Catholic dioceses of Fall River, Springfield and Worcester.
- Investigators reviewed more than 300,000 pages of documents and interviewed more than 100 people, including survivors, lawyers and clergy.
Please note: After journalists discovered the abuse, Massachusetts lawmakers criminalized reckless child endangerment and expanded requirements for mandated reporters to include clergy.
- But these laws cannot be applied retroactively to crimes committed before they took effect.
- Most of the abuses detailed in the report took place before 2002, and the AG says the newly found misconduct did not fall within the applicable statute of limitations. Many accused clergy also died, leaving survivors with few options for legal recourse.
Zoom: The report concluded that diocesan leaders actively covered up abuse allegations before 2002 by transferring accused clergy to new congregations without warning parishioners.
- Leaders also sent accused priests to psychiatric treatment centers before allowing some to return to ministry. Some of these priests were then accused of recidivism.
Between the lines: Survivors described Church processes that caused some to feel pressured to testify to internal Church investigators or to remain silent and say dioceses used NDAs to arrest. survivors to discuss abuse allegations.
- One survivor recalled a staff member saying, “
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