A comprehensive report from the Maryland attorney general released on Wednesday, Apr. 5, stated that clergy members in the Archdiocese of Baltimore abused hundreds of children and teenagers over the course of six decades, helped by a church hierarchy that routinely neglected to investigate and limit their access to children.
It was the most distressing chapter in the decades-long allegations of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, taking place this time in the very first diocese to be founded in the United States.
The attorney general's office conducted a four-year investigation that resulted in the 463-page report, which details dismissals and cover-ups by the church hierarchy as well as what is referred to as "pervasive and persistent abuse" by clergy and others in the archdiocese, New York Times reported.
Before the report was made public, victims' groups and certain current church leaders were aware of the amount of abuse that occurred within the archdiocese. Journalists and advocacy organizations have written about specific situations, and some priests had been charged with crimes throughout the years.
Yet, the report's authors claimed that it aims to be the most thorough and comprehensive analysis of the abuse to date. The report states that it aims to expose the Archdiocese of Baltimore's massive scope and scale of abuse and cover-up for the first time.
State officials have said that they do not expect to file criminal charges as a result of the abuse detailed in the report.
The report was released only a few weeks after legislation removing the statute of limitations for sexual abuse cases was passed by the Maryland Senate in an overwhelming vote. No matter how long ago the abuse occurred, the law would let victims to bring civil claims.
The House has already passed a version of the same bill, and Gov. Wes Moore has said that he looks forward to signing it into law.
The state's Catholic Conference, the lobbying arm for the church, has opposed the bill, calling it unconstitutional and unfair.
Terence McKiernan, the head of the victims' rights organization Bishop Accountability, demanded that Archbishop William E. Lori add the names of the 33 clergy members named in the report to the archdiocese's current list of accused clergy members who have been publicly named as abusers.
In a statement, Mr. McKiernan called the report "a shocking addition to our understanding of clergy abuse of children in Baltimore."
The report names 146 abusers connected to the church, mostly men who served as priests, and lists an additional 10 whose names are redacted because they may still be alive or have not been publicly identified or credibly accused by the archdiocese.
In total, the report documents 156 clergy members who abused more than 600 children starting in the 1940s. The report also redacts the names of some members of the hierarchy who helped protect them.
David Lorenz, director of the Maryland chapter of SNAP, an organization that advocates for victims of clergy abuse, bemoaned some of the report's redactions, particularly a sizable passage of text describing "senior members of the archdiocese" in charge of handling child abuse claims who neglected to look into, report, or deny offenders access to children.
The attorney general's office said people whose identities were redacted would be given an opportunity to file objections with the court, and the court would then decide whether to release a version of the report with fewer redactions.
A court filing in November hinted at the scale of the findings in Wednesday's report but included few details.
That filing, from Brian Frosh, the attorney general at the time, said that "no parish was safe." It requested that a judge allow the release of the full report.
A new attorney general, Anthony Brown, took office in January. In releasing the report on Wednesday, Mr. Brown said it "illustrates the depraved, systemic failure of the archdiocese to protect the most vulnerable — the children it was charged to keep safe."
The report details a familiar pattern of abuse that spread throughout the church and targeted young victims who were weak or particularly loyal to the church, such as altar servers and choir members.
Sometimes the abusers dismissed the victims' experiences as "rough housing," claimed that the assault was "God's will," or threatened to send them and their families to hell if they reported the abuse.
The report lists some parishes where there were numerous perpetrators. 11 child abusers passed through Catonsville's St. Mark Parish between 1964 and 2004.
One victim said that after accompanying him and another youngster to a hockey game, a priest by the name of Robert Lentz gave them both wine and fondled them.
Another victim claimed that Mr. Lentz, who passed away in 2007, was the reason he gave up being an altar boy so that he wouldn't have to travel with him.
Since The Boston Globe exposed the widespread cover-up of abuse in church settings more than 20 years ago, the sexual abuse issue in the Catholic Church has developed during that time.
The Baltimore report is the most current of numerous investigations of sexual abuse in the church conducted recently by state attorneys general and grand juries, the most notable of which was a thorough report on six Pennsylvania dioceses that stunned Catholics across in 2018.
Josh Shapiro, the state's attorney general at the time and current governor, oversaw the probe.
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