Report Details Decades of Clerical Abuse

The number of sexual abuse victims in the Boston Archdiocese over the last six decades “likely exceeds 1,000” and involves more than 250 clergy and other church workers, the attorney general of Massachusetts concluded in a scathing report issued Wednesday.

Unveiling a 76-page document based on church records, state Atty. Gen. Tom Reilly described a “massive, inexcusable failure of leadership in the Archdiocese of Boston,” where the worldwide clerical abuse scandal began in January 2002.

Reilly called the number of victims “staggering,” and declared: “This is the greatest tragedy for all children, ever, in this commonwealth in terms of sexual abuse.”

A small number of priests here have been prosecuted in recent decades on sexual-abuse charges after victims contacted police directly.

But Reilly said he was unable to bring criminal charges against anyone in the Roman Catholic archdiocese hierarchy for shielding abusers, explaining that until last year, state laws did not require priests to report such acts.

“Certainly no one was more disappointed than I and my staff that we cannot prosecute. It was not even a close call,” said Reilly, who took special aim at Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston.

Reilly’s report showed no evidence of recent child sexual abuse by Boston priests. But “given the magnitude of mistreatment” and the archdiocese’s “inadequate” response to the scandal, the report warned that “it is far too soon to conclude that the abuse has, in fact, stopped or could not reoccur in the future.”

Father Christopher Coyne, spokesman for the archdiocese, said in a written statement that “a report of this depth and length requires a serious and thorough reading before any substantive response can be made.”

The attorney general’s 16-month investigation is the most exhaustive undertaken by any public authority into Boston’s long-running clerical abuse scandal.

With state prosecutions apparently ruled out, the focus will shift to how the archdiocese -- with a new archbishop taking over next week -- will resolve more than 500 civil suits filed by alleged victims.

The report follows similar efforts in recent months by prosecutors in New Hampshire and Long Island, N.Y., to use church records to document long-standing cover-ups of child sexual abuse by priests.

But the number of victims cited in the Boston report is by far the highest, said David Clohessy, chairman of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

“The figures are just shocking -- although not shocking to us, obviously,” Clohessy said. “I would stress that without doubt it is a partial figure. The temptation and tendency among many Catholics is to say thank God it has all come out, and it simply has not and never will.”

Archdiocese records reveal complaints of sexual abuse since 1940 by at least 789 victims, and “when information from other sources is considered, the number of alleged victims who have disclosed their abuse likely exceeds 1,000.”

Reilly said his investigative team explored numerous legal avenues in an attempt to hold Boston church leaders legally accountable. But he said he could not find evidence of church leaders’ intent to assist in criminal acts.

He said accessory and conspiracy charges were considered -- but none fit in a state that exempted clergy from mandatory child sexual abuse reporting until last year. Most of the cases also were barred from prosecution by the statute of limitations, he said.

“If the conduct that happened in the past had happened in the past year,” Reilly said, “it would be a far different story.”

Church records show that for decades, the archdiocese offered financial settlements to hundreds of abuse victims who reported their complaints to church officials. But a “culture of secrecy and an institutional acceptance” of clerical sexual abuse prevailed, Reilly said, and church authorities failed to report the abuse to law enforcement or child protection authorities.

Reilly said church leaders knew “every step of the way” that they were exempt from the law. He said they made “deliberate, intentional choices” to protect the church and its reputation at the expense of children.

“In effect, they sacrificed the children for many, many years,” he said.

The church, meanwhile, aggressively lobbied against attempts to broaden statutes that would have required self-reporting by clergy.

Victor Vieth, director of the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse in Washington, said that mandatory reporting laws about child abuse did not exist in the United States until 1967, and they initially focused almost exclusively on physical abuse.

Even as the laws were broadened beginning in the 1970s to cover child sexual abuse, “the primary focus was to get kids into child protection systems,” Vieth said, because most child sexual abuse was assumed to occur in families.

Child sexual abuse was not widely prosecuted “in earnest” until the 1980s, Vieth said. While Massachusetts was slow in extending child protection laws to abuse committed by clergy, he added, “I would say the whole country has been slow, and Massachusetts is just in keeping with it.”

Boston attorney Roderick MacLeish Jr., who represents hundreds of alleged clerical abuse victims, said the state Legislature “dragged its heels” in updating child abuse laws, hampering Reilly from prosecuting church leaders.

“His hands were tied,” MacLeish said. “The power of the church here has been very strong, and our [child sexual abuse] laws are really bad in Massachusetts.”

Twenty-one states -- including California and Massachusetts -- include members of the clergy among professionals mandated to report known or suspected instances of child abuse or neglect. In 18 other states, any person who suspects child abuse or neglect is required to report to authorities.

Reilly targeted Law and his top lieutenants -- most of whom now sit as bishops elsewhere in the country -- for consistently placing children at risk in the Boston Archdiocese.

Law resigned as archbishop in December. He continues to carry the title of cardinal and has been assigned to work as a chaplain to a convent in Maryland.

His successor, Bishop Sean Patrick O’Malley of Palm Beach, Fla., will be installed Wednesday.