Priest’s case echoes church’s shame­ful past

EAST BROOKFIELD (MA)
The Boston Globe [Boston, MA]

October 11, 2026

By Mike Dami­ano

Bishop planned to move accused to another par­ish before charges

In 2021, a young parish­ioner in the rural middle of the state told a vis­it­ing priest that the Rev. Alan J. Mar­tineau had cul­tiv­ated a spe­cial rela­tion­ship with her and then inap­pro­pri­ately touched her. Begin­ning in 2019, the girl said, Mar­tineau repeatedly hugged, kissed, and touched her. Mar­tineau also exchanged tens of thou­sands of text mes­sages with the girl, invest­ig­at­ors later found.

Noti­fied mul­tiple times, the bishop of the dio­cese, Robert Joseph McManus of Worcester, sought to do what church lead­ers before him had done so often: trans­fer Mar­tineau to another par­ish where he would receive the “tutel­age” of an older priest.

But before that trans­fer occurred, a social worker with the dio­cese decided the alleg­a­tions had become so ser­i­ous that they must be repor­ted to the state, so she called the Depart­ment of Chil­dren and Fam­il­ies.

Ulti­mately, instead of mov­ing to another par­ish, Mar­tineau would become the lone priest pro­sec­uted in con­nec­tion with the Mas­sachu­setts attor­ney gen­eral’s years-long invest­ig­a­tion into the dio­ceses of Worcester, Fall River, and Spring­field, which con­cluded last week.

The details of the dio­cese’s hand­ling of the Mar­tineau case, repor­ted here for the first time, con­tain echoes of the prac­tices that rocked the Cath­olic Church two dec­ades ago and that church lead­ers said were con­signed to a shame­ful past. The church once shuffled accused priests from par­ish to par­ish, a prac­tice the Vat­ican itself has since con­demned. Now the church prom­ises to pro­act­ively notify law enforce­ment of alleg­a­tions of abuse — and Mas­sachu­setts passed a law requir­ing dis­clos­ure to the state within 30 days.

The Mar­tineau case, as detailed in pre­vi­ously impoun­ded court records obtained by the Globe, played out over a decidedly longer timeline. Nearly five months elapsed between a meet­ing when McManus was informed of the ini­tial alleg­a­tions and when the dio­cese con­tac­ted author­it­ies. In those inter­ven­ing months, increas­ingly ser­i­ous alleg­a­tions about Mar­tineau’s con­duct emerged, includ­ing an alleged cam­paign of retali­ation against the vic­tim’s fam­ily and details about the approx­im­ately 80,000 text mes­sages the priest exchanged with the under­age girl.

In a state­ment, Ray Del­isle, chan­cel­lor and dir­ector of com­mu­nic­a­tions for the dio­cese, said that the “ini­tial con­cerns raised in the early fall of 2021 by the vic­tim and her fam­ily were about bound­ar­ies and poor judg­ment, but not sexual in nature. Addi­tional out­reach con­tin­ued with the fam­ily who alleged that the pas­tor was not treat­ing them appro­pri­ately and dis­play­ing poor pas­toral judge­ment…”

“It was finally revealed in late Janu­ary 2022 to our Vic­tim Assist­ance Coordin­ator, a licensed social worker who spe­cial­izes in child abuse, that there was something sexual that took place,” Del­isle said. That triggered a man­dat­ory report to the state and a noti­fic­a­tion to the Worcester dis­trict attor­ney’s office, Del­isle said. The court records say that McManus him­self asked the social worker to speak with the vic­tim.

Until now, the Mar­tineau case, which was ulti­mately pro­sec­uted by the Worcester dis­trict attor­ney’s office, was shrouded in secrecy. The case files were impoun­ded. In the pub­lic data­base of Mas­sachu­setts court cases, it was as if the pro­sec­u­tion had never happened.

On Sept. 30, when Attor­ney Gen­eral Andrea Camp­bell announced the wide-ran­ging find­ings of her invest­ig­a­tion into the con­duct of three dio­ceses over the course of a cen­tury, she included a brief men­tion that only said her office had referred a case to the Worcester dis­trict attor­ney that res­ul­ted in a pro­sec­u­tion, but did not provide more details.

The Globe iden­ti­fied the case and obtained the court records about the pro­ceed­ings. The records show Mar­tineau accep­ted a plea deal in Septem­ber 2025 in which he agreed that suf­fi­cient facts exis­ted to con­vict him of assault and bat­tery, though he did not plead guilty to that crime. After the plea agree­ment, the case was dis­missed. Mar­tineau had ini­tially been charged with inde­cent assault and bat­tery on a per­son aged 14 or older and pleaded not guilty. The court gave him a year of pro­ba­tion and ordered him not to con­tact the vic­tim, but then his pro­ba­tion was ended early in June this year.

Accord­ing to Mar­tineau’s law­yer, the charges were reduced because the pro­sec­u­tion could only muster enough evid­ence to prove Mar­tineau had hugged the vic­tim. “This is the weak­est [priest abuse] case I’ve seen,” the law­yer, Louis P. Aloise, said.

The Worcester Tele­gram & Gaz­ette pre­vi­ously repor­ted the plea agree­ment.

Mar­tineau was out of work and liv­ing with his par­ents earlier this year, accord­ing to the court records. Attempts to reach him and his par­ents were not suc­cess­ful and Aloise said he did not believe Mar­tineau wished to com­ment. The dio­cese has said Mar­tineau can no longer present him­self as a priest, although he has peti­tioned to be rein­stated, Aloise said. At the time of the alleg­a­tions, Mar­tineau led the par­ishes of St. Paul and St. Stan­i­slaus in War­ren.

The invest­ig­a­tion released by Camp­bell last week began in 2019, and it found evid­ence that more than 270 Cath­olic cler­ics abused nearly 1,000 chil­dren over sev­eral dec­ades in the dio­ceses of Fall River, Spring­field, and Worcester. It was the most exhaust­ive invest­ig­a­tion since a sim­ilar probe of the Arch­diocese of Boston released in 2003.

Camp­bell said the major­ity of instances iden­ti­fied in the report had occurred before the church scan­dal erup­ted in the early 2000s and many could not be pro­sec­uted due to stat­utes of lim­it­a­tions or because the alleged abuse wasn’t con­sidered a crime under state law when it occurred.

In the dec­ades since the height of the priest abuse scan­dal, the Worcester dio­cese has been an out­lier by res­ist­ing cer­tain reforms, includ­ing calls by advoc­ates and Camp­bell to release a list of names of cred­ibly accused priests. Camp­bell’s report also cri­ti­cized the Worcester dio­cese for how it mon­itored priests, includ­ing those accused of abuse.

One para­graph in the attor­ney gen­eral’s report refers to the Mar­tineau case as an example, although it does not name the priest or dis­cuss his pro­sec­u­tion.

Bishop McManus learned of the alleg­a­tions against Mar­tineau no later than Sept. 9, 2021, accord­ing to the court records obtained by the Globe.

On that day, he met with Mar­tineau and another priest from the Worcester dio­cese, Alfredo Por­ras. Por­ras had con­vened the meet­ing after hear­ing from a young parish­ioner that Mar­tineau had inap­pro­pri­ately touched her. Por­ras had then con­fron­ted Mar­tineau about the accus­a­tion.

Now, in the Sept. 9 meet­ing, Por­ras told the bishop that Mar­tineau had con­fessed, at least par­tially. When ini­tially con­fron­ted by Por­ras, Mar­tineau “agreed that he had held hands with [the vic­tim] and might have kissed her on the fore­head at some point, but denied any other alleg­a­tions,” Por­ras explained to the bishop, accord­ing to the court records. The vic­tim was 14 years old the year the alleged touch­ing began, accord­ing to the court records.

A few weeks later, on Sept. 27, 2021, Por­ras met with McManus again and told him that the vic­tim’s alleg­a­tions against Mar­tineau were more expans­ive. Por­ras had met with the vic­tim and the vic­tim’s father and learned that she and Mar­tineau allegedly “had held hands, kissed, and hugged each other for pro­longed amounts of time,” accord­ing to a police report.

The vic­tim was nervous when speak­ing about the alleg­a­tions and Por­ras “believed [she] felt guilty about what had happened,” accord­ing to the court records.

In Octo­ber, the vic­tim detailed her alleg­a­tions in a writ­ten note, rather than speak­ing them out loud, and gave the note to Por­ras.

The inap­pro­pri­ate touch­ing had included: “Hug­ging. Hand hold­ing. Kiss­ing.” The alleged kiss­ing, she wrote, was “usu­ally done when part­ing, but some­times ran­domly — only he kissed me.” Addi­tion­ally, Mar­tineau “would slide his hands along my waist,” she wrote.

Mar­tineau also allegedly held her tightly, cradled her head, scratched her face with his beard “in a teas­ing way,” and stroked her hair, accord­ing to the note. “Our fore­heads would touch, then noses, the[n] occa­sion­ally lips,” she wrote, accord­ing to a police report.

Mar­tineau exchanged approx­im­ately 80,000 text mes­sages with the vic­tim between 2019, when the touch­ing allegedly began, and 2021, accord­ing to the court records.

The vic­tim’s father had con­fron­ted Mar­tineau about the mes­sages earlier in 2021, accord­ing to the court records. Then, in August, one of the vic­tim’s broth­ers found Mar­tineau in the fam­ily’s home in the middle of the night while the par­ents and the vic­tim were out of town, accord­ing to the court records. The fam­ily home was loc­ated on church prop­erty. The brother was sleep­ing in the liv­ing room when he saw Mar­tineau walk­ing through the house using his phone’s flash­light to see the way. Con­fron­ted by the brother, Mar­tineau said he had entered the house to close the win­dows before a pre­dicted rain, accord­ing to the court records.

After that incid­ent and fol­low­ing the meet­ings with the bishop, Mar­tineau escal­ated what the vic­tim’s par­ents later described as a cam­paign of retali­ation against them.

The vic­tim’s fam­ily, which was exper­i­en­cing fin­an­cial hard­ship, lived on the prop­erty of St. Stan­i­slaus rent-free in exchange for labor on church grounds. That gave Mar­tineau, who was the church’s admin­is­trator, sig­ni­fic­ant power over them.

The par­ents told police Mar­tineau cut off their inter­net ser­vice, attemp­ted to halt their oil deliv­er­ies, and falsely accused a fam­ily mem­ber of steal­ing a lawn mower from the church, accord­ing to the court records.

Mar­tineau remained the head of the par­ish, hold­ing sway over the vic­tim’s fam­ily for months after McManus first learned of the alleg­a­tions against him.

At some point — the date is not spe­cified in the records — the vic­tim’s father dir­ectly informed McManus about Mar­tineau’s alleged con­duct toward his fam­ily. Then McManus asked the dio­cese’s vic­tim assist­ance coordin­ator, a social worker named Judith Audette, to speak with the vic­tim. Del­isle said this request likely occurred in the fall.

The vic­tim’s father also emailed Audette on Dec. 9 and told him that once Mar­tineau had asked his daugh­ter to bring laun­dry to Mar­tineau’s bed­room. “Once they got there, they hugged for an exten­ded period of time,” accord­ing to a police report’s sum­mary of the email. The vic­tim’s sis­ter, who was in the build­ing at the time, con­firmed the account and went upstairs to the priest’s bed­room to find her sis­ter because she was uncom­fort­able with the situ­ation.

After her first inter­view with the vic­tim, Audette con­cluded Mar­tineau had “viol­ated many codes of con­duct, but no sexual acts were repor­ted by [the vic­tim].” The court records do not spe­cify which alleg­a­tions the vic­tim relayed to Audette in the first inter­view.

At the end of Decem­ber, the dio­cese announced in its offi­cial news­pa­per, the Cath­olic Free Press, that Mar­tineau would trans­fer to St. George Par­ish in Worcester.

There, Mar­tineau would “bene­fit from the tutel­age of a seasoned pas­tor,” accord­ing to a Decem­ber 2022 pub­lic state­ment by the dio­cese.

But before that trans­fer was com­pleted, Audette, the social worker, con­tin­ued to com­mu­nic­ate with the vic­tim by email. In those emails, the vic­tim described more inap­pro­pri­ate inter­ac­tions, includ­ing one instance in which Mar­tineau allegedly picked her up, and twirled her in such a way that their groins touched, accord­ing to a police report.

Audette was a man­dated reporter, mean­ing she had a legal oblig­a­tion to report alleg­a­tions of child abuse to the state. In late Janu­ary and early Feb­ru­ary, she informed the Depart­ment of Chil­dren and Fam­il­ies of the alleg­a­tions. McManus also placed Mar­tineau on leave and the dio­cese hired an out­side firm to con­duct an inde­pend­ent invest­ig­a­tion, accord­ing to the dio­cese. The dio­cese also noti­fied the Worcester dis­trict attor­ney’s office.

By then, in Feb­ru­ary 2022, it had been nearly five months since McManus learned of the ini­tial alleg­a­tions.

Not long after, the attor­ney gen­eral’s office referred the mat­ter to the Worcester dis­trict attor­ney for pro­sec­u­tion, accord­ing to a spokes­per­son for the attor­ney gen­eral’s office. At the end of 2022, the out­side invest­ig­at­ive firm hired by the dio­cese delivered its find­ings and the dio­cese announced that Mar­tineau had been sus­pen­ded due to “a cred­ible alleg­a­tion of sexual abuse of a minor.” The firm, Mat­thews and Mat­thews, shared its find­ings with local law enforce­ment.

The next month, in Janu­ary 2023, Mar­tineau was charged with three counts of inde­cent assault and bat­tery on a per­son 14 or over in East Brook­field Dis­trict Court.

The case then lan­guished for more than two years before the Septem­ber 2025 plea agree­ment.

The Worcester dis­trict attor­ney’s office said it was unable to com­ment because the case files are impoun­ded.

The Globe is not identi­fy­ing the vic­tim or her fam­ily mem­bers and they declined to com­ment. Por­ras and Audette did not respond to requests for com­ment.

Aloise, Mar­tineau’s law­yer dur­ing the con­clu­sion of the crim­inal pro­ceed­ings, said he was pre­pared to take the case to trial before the Worcester dis­trict attor­ney’s office offered the plea agree­ment and the court agreed to impound the case files.

He said the pro­sec­u­tion would not have been able to prove the alleg­a­tions in court. “I’ve done this for 50-something years and I rep­res­en­ted quite a num­ber of priests espe­cially back in the hey­day in the 2000s and this is the weak­est case I’ve seen,” he said.

A search for the case’s docket num­ber in the Mas­sachu­setts courts data­base returned only the words, “No records found.”