BALTIMORE (MD)
Washington Post
April 7, 2023
More than 20 years after revelations of Catholic clergy sex abuse shocked the world, an indelible feature of the scandal — its scope over time and geography and the scale of its horrors — has not lost its capacity to astonish. Each major disclosure adds to the disturbing portrait of the violence that has been perpetrated against children and the church’s systematic coverups.
That was driven home once again by the release of a major report by the Maryland attorney general’s office documenting the abuse of hundreds of children and young adults over nearly six decades in just one of the church’s dominions, the archdiocese of Baltimore, where nearly a half million Catholics live today. Adding judicial insult to clerical injury, the full report was withheld from the public for months on orders from a Maryland judge. A different judge finally authorized its release, with redactions.
The report’s basics were contained in a summary published by the attorney general’s office last fall: It alleges that more than 600 victims were abused over the decades covered by the attorney general’s investigators, starting in the 1940s. The accused perpetrators were nearly 160 priests, most of them now deceased. About a quarter of those clerics had not previously been identified by the archdiocese.
That toll, and those crimes, were horrifying enough. But Maryland’s then-Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D), who commissioned the report in 2019, said the headline numbers represented just a fraction of the picture. Many more victims, and perpetrators, remain unidentified.
The publication Wednesday of the full report added heartbreaking, stomach-turning detail to what was already known from the summary. Many of its 456 pages feature accounts from survivors; they make for difficult reading. The emotional suffering and physical harm they endured offers a vivid portrait of an institution determined to silence victims, shield abusers and deter law enforcement.
An illustrative example is Frederick Duke, who served as a priest in a variety of parishes, including in Baltimore, who admitted that he had raped and abused 26 boys over the course of 12 years, until 1961. The archdiocese’s records include notes taken as it prepared for an interview with one of his victims, in 1988: “do not talk about any other children,” “we will deny any liability,” “maybe we could say that we have nothing in our files,” “if a lawyer is present, express surprise.”
Those are the jottings of what amounted to a criminal enterprise.
The Baltimore archdiocese cooperated with the attorney general’s office as it prepared the report and did not oppose its release by Maryland’s current attorney general, Anthony G. Brown (D). But it also paid some legal fees for members of a group that persuaded a judge to seal proceedings around the report’s release and to redact some names in it. Moreover, church lobbyists in Annapolis were instrumental in getting state lawmakers to pass a 2017 law that barred future extensions in the period during which adult victims of abuse may sue to seek restitution from their abusers or their enablers in the church. And the church continues to oppose lifting the statute of limitations on civil suits.
Justice in clerical sex abuse cases has advanced, but it remains a work in progress.