BALTIMORE (MD)
New York Times [New York NY]
April 5, 2023
By Ruth Graham
Clergy members across the Archdiocese of Baltimore abused hundreds of children and teenagers over the course of six decades, abetted by a church hierarchy that systematically failed to investigate and restrict their access to children, according to a detailed report from the Maryland attorney general released on Wednesday.
It was the latest harrowing installment in the decades-long revelations of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, this time set in the first Catholic diocese established in the United States.
The 463-page report, which is the result of a four-year investigation by the attorney general’s office, documents what it describes as “pervasive and persistent abuse” by clergy members and others in the archdiocese, as well as dismissals and cover-ups by the church hierarchy.
Widespread abuse within the archdiocese was already well known by victims’ groups and, to some extent, acknowledged by current church leaders before the report was released. Individual cases had been documented by advocacy groups and journalists, and some individual priests had been prosecuted over the years for their crimes.
Yet the report is meant to be the fullest, most complete account of the abuse to date, its authors said. “We hope to make public for the first time the enormous scope and scale of abuse and concealment perpetrated by the Archdiocese of Baltimore,” the report says.
State officials have said that they do not expect to file criminal charges as a result of the abuse detailed in the report.
However, the report landed just weeks after the Maryland Senate overwhelmingly voted to pass legislation repealing the statute of limitations on sexual abuse lawsuits. The law would allow victims to file civil lawsuits no matter how long ago their abuse happened.
The House has already passed a version of the same bill, and Gov. Wes Moore has said that he looks forward to signing it into law.
The state’s Catholic Conference, the lobbying arm for the church, has opposed the bill, calling it unconstitutional and unfair.
The report includes the names of 33 clergy members who were not previously identified as abusers, according to Terence McKiernan, the president of the victims’ advocacy group Bishop Accountability, who called for Archbishop William E. Lori to add those names to the archdiocese’s existing public list of accused clergy members.
In a statement, Mr. McKiernan called the report “a shocking addition to our understanding of clergy abuse of children in Baltimore.”
The report names 146 abusers connected to the church, mostly men who served as priests, and lists an additional 10 whose names are redacted because they may still be alive or have not been publicly identified or credibly accused by the archdiocese.
In total, the report documents 156 clergy members who abused more than 600 children starting in the 1940s. The report also redacts the names of some members of the hierarchy who helped protect them.
David Lorenz, director of the Maryland chapter of SNAP, an advocacy group for clergy abuse victims, lamented some of the redactions in the report, including a significant block of text documenting “senior members of the archdiocese” involved in handling child abuse claims who failed to investigate, report or remove offenders’ access to children. The attorney general’s office said people whose identities were redacted would be given an opportunity to file objections with the court, and the court would then decide whether to release a version of the report with fewer redactions.
A court filing in November hinted at the scale of the findings in Wednesday’s report but included few details. That filing, from Brian Frosh, the attorney general at the time, said that “no parish was safe.” It requested that a judge allow the release of the full report.
A new attorney general, Anthony Brown, took office in January. In releasing the report on Wednesday, Mr. Brown said it “illustrates the depraved, systemic failure of the archdiocese to protect the most vulnerable — the children it was charged to keep safe.”
The report describes a familiar pattern of abuse that has unfolded across the church, in which abusers singled out children who were vulnerable or especially devoted the church, like altar servers and choir members. The abusers sometimes told victims that the abuse was “God’s will,” brushed it off as “rough housing” or said the victims and their families would go to hell if they told anyone.
The report documents some parishes that contained multiple abusers. From 1964 to 2004, 11 child abusers cycled through St. Mark Parish in Catonsville. One victim reported that a priest named Robert Lentz gave him and another teenager alcohol and fondled them after taking them to a hockey game. Another victim said he quit being an altar boy so he wouldn’t have to ride in the car with Mr. Lentz, who died in 2007.
The sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has unfurled over the course of more than 20 years, since The Boston Globe documented the cover-up of widespread abuse in church settings.
The Baltimore report is the latest of multiple recent investigations by state attorneys general and grand juries on sexual abuse in the church, most notably a sweeping report on six dioceses in Pennsylvania that shocked Catholics across the country in 2018. That investigation was led by Josh Shapiro, then the state’s attorney general and now its governor.
Baltimore has symbolic stature within American Catholicism as the first Catholic diocese in the United States, established in 1789. Until 1808, the entire American Catholic Church formally existed within the Baltimore diocese. The archdiocese currently includes more than 150 parishes and missions and 59 schools. Its current influential leader, Archbishop Lori, was elected in November as vice president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“I see the pain and destruction that was perpetrated by representatives of the church and perpetuated by the failures that allowed this evil to fester, and I am deeply sorry,” Archbishop Lori wrote in a response to the report, calling it “a heartbreaking and new reminder of a tragic and shameful time.” The lengthy statement emphasized that a vast majority of documented abuse cases took place decades ago, and that the archdiocese had made numerous reforms this century.
In a statement on Monday anticipating the report’s release, the archbishop noted that “no one credibly accused of child abuse is in ministry in the archdiocese today.”
Advocates for victims applauded the report’s release.
“It’s a huge relief to have this out,” Mr. Lorenz of SNAP said. He described the report as the first time that an institution had validated the accounts of the victims he works with. “This institution, the attorney general’s office said, ‘We believe you, we’re writing it down, it’s on paper, it’s recorded as truth,’” Mr. Lorenz said. “It says someone believes us.”
Ruth Graham is a Dallas-based national correspondent covering religion, faith and values. She previously reported on religion for Slate. More about Ruth Graham