While only one person has been indicted, advocates and victims’ groups predict it would bring more survivors forward and spark a wave of new civil lawsuits.

Cases of child sex abuse by clergy in the nation’s oldest Catholic archdioceses weren’t unknown.

But on Wednesday, a long-awaited report by the Maryland Attorney General spotlighted the depth of a crisis that spanned decades, finding a “staggering pervasiveness” of child sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore that victimized at least 600 children between the 1940s and 2002.

The report, which listed more than 150 Catholic priests and clergy members accused of “horrific and repeated” abuse – as well as attempts to protect accused clergy by the church hierarchy – came as Maryland’s legislature voted to end a statute of limitations for child sex abuse-related civil lawsuits.

While only one person has been indicted as a result of the investigation, advocates…