UNITED STATES
Inverse
By Caitlin Busch on May 31, 2017
Father Joseph Maskell, a previous chaplain at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, is the key “villain” of Netflix’s recently released docu-series The Keepers. Maskell’s name is intrinsically tied to allegations of systematic sexual abuse at Keough, an all-girls high school, and the murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik, both of which are large focuses of the series. Father Maskell died of a major stroke on May 7, 2001, at the age of 62, seven years after escaping the Archdiocese of Baltimore and fleeing to Ireland. He has never been officially charged with any of the accused crimes.
A controversial figure even before the premiere of The Keepers, Maskell had been accused of abuse many times over the years without any of the accusations sticking. A 2015 feature from Huffington Post did a deep-dive on the Cesnik case before The Keepers introduced the masses to the nun’s story, and reported on what Maskell’s fate entailed.
See, Maskell has never, to this day, been charged with any wrong-doing, though he’s been accused of abuse many times over the years. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests reports that “Baltimore City prosecutors have charged only three of the 37 Baltimore priests who have been accused of sexual abuse since 1980,” according to the Huff Post article. “Just two of those priests were convicted, and one of those convictions was overturned in 2005.” Charging a priest, it turns out, is a hard thing to do, especially when that priest is as well-connected as Maskell seemed to be.
Maskell in particular was a difficult target. At the time, he served as the chaplain for the Baltimore County police, the Maryland State Police and the Maryland National Guard. Maskell kept a police scanner and loaded handgun in his car, drank beer with the officers at a local dive bar, and often went on “ride-alongs” with his police friends at night to respond to petty crimes or catch teenagers making out in their cars.
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