BALTIMORE (MD)
Washington Post
December 6, 2022
By Michelle Boorstein
The order includes documents that have already been released to the public
A Baltimore Circuit Court judge has sealed all records — including, retroactively,some that are already public — related to Attorney General Brian E. Frosh’s 456-page report into historical clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Circuit Court Judge Anthony Vittoria’s ruling Friday concurs with a request to the court made Nov. 21 by an anonymous group of people who are named in the report but not accused of abuse. The report includes allegations of coverup and mishandling as well as abuse. Lawyers for the group filed a request to keep all filings and proceedings around the release of the report secret, until a judge rules whether the report, which is already under seal, should be released, and to provide their clients a confidential opportunity to address the court before that decision is reached.
“To preserve the secrecy and sanctity of grand jury proceedings, the Court finds that … all proceedings, filings, and communications regarding this matter are to be CONFIDENTIAL,” Vittoria’s ruling said, according to a copy published Monday afternoon in the Baltimore Sun.
All future filings, Vittoria wrote, are to be delivered to his chambers, not filed with the clerk.
A spokesperson for Frosh had no comment, citing the judge’s call for confidentiality.
The report is the result of a nearly four-year investigation by Frosh’s office, which included testimony before a grand jury. Such testimony is normally private unless a judge rules otherwise. On Nov. 17, Frosh’s office filed a 35-page request in Circuit Court for the full report to be released.
“Now is the time for reckoning,” said the Nov. 17 filing. “Publicly airing the transgressions of the Church is critical to holding people and institutions accountable and improving the way sexual abuse allegations are handled going forward.” The filing said it found 158 priests who abused more than 600 young victims over 80 years.
The archdiocese had no comment. It has said that it does not oppose the release of the report, but it also confirmed later that it is paying in part for the legal fees of the anonymous group. The archdiocese “has obligations to some of those individuals which may include indemnifying legal fees for representation,” Archbishop William Lori said in a Nov. 22 statement.
The effort to keep the proceedings secret mirrors legal wrangling that preceded the release of an explosive report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania in 2018, the only other report like Maryland’s. In the end, the state’s supreme court released the report, but with some of the 300 alleged predators’ names redacted.
Advocates have argued that such reports, by state prosecutors, are the only way to establish, for history’s sake and for the victim-survivors, what happened. In many places civil and criminal statutes of limitation make it impossible for victims, who often are unable for decades to come forward, to seek justice in civil courts.132CommentsGift Article
Michelle Boorstein has been a religion reporter since 2006. She has covered the shifting blend of religion and politics under four U.S. presidents, chronicled the rise of secularism in the United States, and broken financial and sexual scandals from the synagogue down the street to the Mormon Church in Utah to the Vatican. Twitter