FALL RIVER (MA)
The Sun Chronicle [Attleboro MA]
October 2, 2026
By Mike Kirby
Some of the first evidence that the Roman Catholic Church faced a clergy abuse scandal took place during the 1990s in North Attleboro with the case of Father James Porter.
The depth of that abuse came more fully to light Wednesday as the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office released the results of a long-awaited investigation into three of the state’s dioceses: Fall River, Worcester and Springfield.
The investigation concluded that more than 270 religious leaders across the three dioceses abused more than 1,000 children over a span of about a century.
While a grand jury investigated the Archdiocese of Boston soon after The Boston Globe’s 2002 report into clergy sex abuse exposed the issue, this new report examines the rest of the state.
During the seven-year investigation first begun when Gov. Maura Healey was attorney general, lawyers for the state interviewed more than 100 people and reviewed more than 300,000 pages of documents.
The probe concluded, however, without prosecutors bringing any new indictments, and Attorney General Andrea Campbell used the report’s release to call for changes to the state’s laws that would remove barriers to bringing legal claims surrounding childhood sexual abuse. Among the reforms should be lifting the statute of limitations on child abuse, she said.
“Sadly, these legal limitations mean that our office is unable to seek criminal charges, and there were no new indictments arising from this investigation,” Campbell writes in the report. “However, these legal limitations do not diminish the seriousness of the conduct documented in this report.”
The investigation found that for years those dioceses knew that children were being abused by priests, but too often they protected the reputation of the church rather than protecting children, she said.
“Behind every one of those numbers is a child whose safety was violated, a family that was changed forever, and a survivor who carried the trauma of that abuse for years and, in many cases, decades,” Campbell said.
Porter was the first national high-profile case involving allegations that a priest had molested children in his parish and that the church had simply moved him from parish to parish to try to avoid scandal.
Allegations of abuse began following Porter immediately after he became a priest in 1960 when he was assigned to St. Mary’s Church in North Attleboro. He was molesting children within weeks, sometimes brazenly, and rumors about him quickly spread through the town, but a culture of shame and denial allowed him to stay in town until 1963.
Porter was eventually accused of having molested 68 boys and girls in North Attleboro.
In 1963 church authorities transferred Porter to a Fall River parish, where complaints about his behavior continued. He was later transferred to New Bedford, where more parents complained.
Porter was later sent to New Mexico for treatment, but whenever he went to other parishes, complaints followed. He left the priesthood in 1974, got married and had four children.
In 1992, some of his North Attleboro victims appeared on a Boston television talk show with an audio tape of Porter admitting to abusing as many as 100 children.
He was indicted and in 1993 pleaded guilty to molesting 28 children and was sentenced to 18 to 20 years in prison.
Porter was scheduled to be released in January 2004, but the state moved to have him classified as sexually dangerous to keep him behind bars indefinitely. He died in February 2005.
Campbell said the investigation led to three cases being referred to the state’s district attorneys, but they did not bring charges because the victims sought privacy.
A civil suit is another avenue for survivors to seek justice, Campbell said, but that remains limited in cases where claims have expired and the cap against a charitable organization is $20,000.
Campbell said she supports changing those laws for childhood sexual abuse cases.
Campbell also called on the church to step up.
“I strongly urge the dioceses and the broader Church to take these recommendations seriously and implement greater, meaningful changes to strengthen child protection and improve responses to allegations of abuse,” she wrote. “No institution should ever put its own reputation and interest above the safety and well-being of its constituents, especially children.”
Citing her own faith and disclosing for the first time that she was a survivor of child sexual abuse at the hands of a relative, Campbell said the probe was “not about denouncing a faith” but rather a demand for accountability.
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who has represented survivors of clergy sex abuse for decades, commended Campbell for “fighting evil within the Catholic Church,” according to MassLive. Many of his clients helped investigators with the probe.
“And they did so proudly,” he told MassLive.
Now, Garabedian said the dioceses should publicly release its files on clergy sex abuse and the state should amend its laws to promote transparency.
“I do not believe that the Catholic Church is going to change its ways very much,” Garabedian told MassLive. “The change comes from outside the Catholic Church.”