BOSTON (MA)
The Boston Globe
July 16, 2019
By Eric MacLeish
Last weekend, the Xaverian Brothers, a religious order that operates five Catholic high schools in Massachusetts released the names of 34 priests alleged to have sexually abused children in St. John’s Preparatory School in Danvers, Xaverian Brothers High School in Westwood, St. John’s High School in Shrewsbury, and Malden Catholic High School. This disclosure differs dramatically from those transparent investigations made recently by private schools all around the country and pays only lip service to current standards on responses to sexual abuse allegations.
For starters, the data for the current report was based on a “file review,” presumably of personnel files. In 2002, then-Cardinal Bernard Law promised a similar file review, which captured only a fraction of child molesters masquerading as priests and contained almost no information about their enablers. File reviews presume that the despicable crimes of religious order priests and their superiors were well-documented. While some crimes were described, no investigation can presume that a file review tells the complete story. The horrific history of child abuse is littered with cover-ups and the deletion of information concerning predatory priests and cooperative bishops.
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