An investigation by the US Attorney General for Maryland identified 158 Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Baltimore accused of sexually and physically abusing more than 600 victims over the past 80 years, according to court records filed on Thursday.
Attorney General Brian Frosh announced that his office has completed a 463-page report on the investigation, beginning in 2019, and has filed a motion with the Baltimore District Court to make the report public.
Court authorization is required because the report contains information from the grand jury subpoenas, but the date of the decision is unknown.
“For decades, survivors have denounced sexual abuse by Catholic priests, and for decades the Church has covered up abuse instead of holding abusers accountable and protecting its congregations,” Frosh wrote in the court filing.
The report, titled “Clergy Abuse in Maryland,” identifies 115 priests prosecuted for sexual abuse and/or publicly identified by the archdiocese as “credibly accused of sexual abuse.”
The document includes an additional 43 priests accused of sexual abuse but not publicly identified by the archdiocese, according to the file.
“The report summarizes the sexual abuse and physical torture perpetrated by the 158 priests and the Archdiocese’s response to that abuse,” according to the lawsuit.
While the court record notes that more than 600 victims have been identified, it adds that “there are almost certainly hundreds more, as the Department of Justice’s Annual Crime Victimization Report showed that most incidents of sexual assault were not are denounced”.
Both boys and girls have been victims of abuse, from preschool age to adulthood.
“While no parish was safe, some congregations and schools had multiple abusive priests, and some had more than one sexually abusive priest at a time,” the lawsuit states.
The investigation also revealed that the Archdiocese failed to report many allegations of sexual abuse, conducted proper investigations into the alleged abuse, removed abusers from ministry, or restricted their access to children.
“Instead, he went to great lengths to keep the abuse a secret,” the record says. “While the Archdiocese has reported a large number of complaints to the police, especially in recent years, for decades it has fought to ensure that the perpetrators do not face justice,” he adds.
Frosh argues that “public disclosure of the Church’s misdeeds is critical to holding individuals and institutions accountable and improving the way sexual abuse allegations are handled in the future.”
The lawsuit also notes that of the 43 priests who were not publicly identified or indicted, 30 died.
The Attorney General’s Office has redacted all identifying information for the 13 living church employees accused of sexual abuse, but who were not listed as credibly accused by the Archdiocese and who were not prosecuted.
In 2019, Frosh launched a criminal investigation into the sexual abuse of children by priests and other officials of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Hundreds of thousands of documents dating back to the 1940s were produced in response to subpoenas.
As part of the investigation, the Attorney General’s Office created an email address and hotline for people to report information, requested by 300 people interviewed by investigators, as well as witnesses.
Source: TSF
