This webpage presents sources for “Digital Archives of Catholic Clergy Abuse: The Example of BishopAccountability.org,” by Terence McKiernan, in Aufarbeitung, Akten, Archive – zum Umgang mit sensiblen Dokumenten (Berlin: Unabhängige Kommission zur Aufarbeitung sexuellen Kindesmissbrauchs, 2023), the proceedings of the conference “Processing, Files, Archives – Dealing with Sensitive Documents” on June 30, 2022 in Berlin, sponsored by the Independent Commission for the Reappraisal of Child Sexual Abuse. This chapter began as a dialogue at the conference between Terence McKiernan and Doris Reisinger and is dedicated to her in thanks.
INTRO
Better understanding of Catholic clergy abuse of children and adults is partly the result of digital archives, which have made documents, investigative reporting, and other sources more freely available. One important example of this information revolution and its beneficial results is Gender, Sex, and Power: Towards a History of Clergy Sex Abuse in the U.S. Catholic Church (GSP), a 2020-2022 partnership of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame and BishopAccountability.org (BA).
One of the first Gender, Sex, and Power papers to be published was an article by Doris Reisinger about reproductive coercion:
Doris Reisinger, “Reproductive Abuse in the Context of Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church,” Religions (February 2022)
The GSP project ended with a symposium, including an earlier version of the Reisinger paper:
Gender, Sex, and Power: March 2022 Symposium, video of Panel 1, Panel 2, and Panel 3.
Direct link to Reisinger’s presentation at the March 2022 Symposium.
Background information on BishopAccountability.org:
- Vast Archive on Abuse Aids Victims, Scholars: Database Lists 3,000 Accused Priests, by Michael Paulson, Boston Globe (January 29, 2008)
- The Conscience of the Catholic Church, by Rose Minutaglio, Elle (February 26, 2021)
- Missbrauchsskandal der Kirche: Das stille Gewissen, von Doris Reisinger, Christ & Welt (30. Mai 2021); English translation.
Anne Barrett Doyle, Terence McKiernan, Suzy Nauman, and Stephen Sheehan are the current staff of BishopAccountability.org.
U.S. CLERGY ABUSE REVELATIONS AND ARCHIVAL WORK 2002-2023
BOSTON, MANCHESTER, AND THE DOCUMENT ARCHIVES
BA’s commitment to digital archiving dates to April 8, 2002, when the family of survivor Gregory Ford and their attorney, Eric MacLeish, publicly released a substantial collection of diocesan abuse documents for the first time. After a judge permitted the release of other Boston priest files, BA acquired those files and posted thousands of pages.
The Boston document releases, reported by the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, prepared the ground for a report and document release from the New Hampshire Attorney General. BA posted that 8,601-page document archive about the Diocese of Manchester in its entirety, the first major clergy abuse archive available online. BA continued to collect archives made public by the work of survivors and their advocates and by news organizations, and posted selections or entire archives online. BA’s collection of public clergy abuse archives now totals nearly a quarter of a million pages, with more than a million more pages in preparation.
Boston Documents
- The Boston Globe’s account of the April 8, 2002 release of the Shanley documents, with links to survivor witness and documents
- Data on newspaper and magazine coverage of clergy abuse 1984-2004
- Catholics observe Good Friday with protests, prayer: Both inside and outside cathedral, abuse issue cited, by Michael Paulson, Boston Globe (March 30, 2002)
- Archive of Boston Globe Spotlight reporting 2002-2004
- Eric MacLeish’s Memorandum of Law about 26 Boston priests
- Accompanying archive of documents from 26 priest files
- Summary of BA’s online archives
- Letter by Fr. Arthur Chabot, M.S., to the Archdiocese of Boston, 1967
- More clergy abuse, secrecy cases: Records detail quiet shifting of rogue priests, by Thomas Farragher and Sacha Pfeiffer, Boston Globe (December 4, 2002)
Manchester Documents
- Agreement between New Hampshire Attorney General Philip T. McLaughlin and Bishop John B. McCormack of the Diocese of Manchester (December 9-10, 2002)
- New Hampshire Attorney General’s Report and Investigative Archive.
- Hypertext version of the Father Gordon MacRae chapter of the report, with links to over 100 MacRae documents:
- No Crueler Tyranny | A Priest’s Story: Not all accounts of sex abuse in the Catholic Church turn out to be true, by Dorothy Rabinowitz, Wall Street Journal (April 27-28, 2005)
Davenport Documents
Bridgeport Documents
- History of Clergy Sexual Misconduct Within the Diocese of Bridgeport
- Court decisions leading to the release of the Bridgeport documents
Franciscan Documents
- Archive of Franciscan Sex Abuse in the Province of St. Barbara: Priest Files, Deposition Transcripts and Exhibits
- Court decisions leading to the release of the Franciscan documents: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
- Father Robert Van Handel OFM’s sexual autobiography
- A Priest’s Confession, a Man’s Relief, by Ashley Powers, Los Angeles Times (January 15, 2013)
Santa Fe Documents
- New archive of Santa Fe clergy abuse documents hailed as unprecedented, by Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola, National Catholic Reporter (February 22, 2023)
- Agreement to create a Santa Fe clergy abuse archive
Public Archives currently available for research at BishopAccountability.org.
REPORTS AND ORAL HISTORIES
Survivors’ accounts are the ultimate source of information on clergy abuse, through memoirs and public statements, reports to law enforcement and to church entities, lawsuits and depositions, interviews with reporters, testimony in legislative hearings, and in other venues. Projects at BA and other organizations have begun to collect oral histories of survivors and others involved in the clergy abuse revelations. During inquiries, the testimony of survivors has been crucial. In the United States, reports by attorneys general and grand juries have demonstrated how survivor testimony complements evidence gathered from church archives.
- Oral history of survivor Phil Saviano, from BA’s oral history project
- StoryCorps conversation between Barbara Dorris and the late Barbara Blaine of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
- Collections of survivor accounts: Australia, France, Germany, Ireland (1, 2), United States
Reports of Grand Juries and Attorneys General
1) New York NY – Westchester County Grand Jury Report, June 19, 2002
2) Rockville Centre NY – Suffolk County Grand Jury Report, February 10, 2003
3) Manchester NH – Attorney General’s Report with investigative archive, March 3, 2003
4) Boston MA – Reilly Report and Executive Summary, July 23, 2003
5) Philadelphia PA – Report of the Grand Jury, September 25, 2003 (unsealed September 15, 2005; made public March 29, 2011)
6) Portland ME – Attorney General’s Report, February 24, 2004. See also the AG’s investigative materials released May 27, 2005 and July 8, 2005
7) Philadelphia PA – Grand Jury Report, September 15, 2005
8) Philadelphia PA – Report of the Grand Jury, dated January 21, 2011, released February 10, 2011; see also criminal charges
9) Altoona-Johnstown PA – Report of the Grand Jury, March 1, 2016 (with bookmarks). See also a press release and timeline.
10) Altoona-Johnstown PA – Presentment in the Baker case, March 15, 2016, paginated and made searchable, with the Schinelli, D’Aversa, and Criscitelli criminal complaints, a timeline, and the AG’s press release; see also the original presentment, not searchable and without pagination, and the Schinelli, D’Aversa, and Criscitelli criminal complaints as originally posted with the same presentment attached to each.
11) Pennsylvania – 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury, Report 1, Interim – Redacted (August 14, 2018);- Responses to 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury, Report 1, Interim – Redacted (August 14, 2018)
– 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury: Final Redacted Report and Responses (December 16, 2019)
12) Missouri – Catholic Church Clergy Abuse Investigation Report, Office of Attorney General Eric Schmitt (September 13, 2019)
13) Colorado – Roman Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse of Children in Colorado from 1950 to 2019, Special Master’s Report by Bob Troyer, Commissioned by Attorney General Phil Weiser (dated October 22, 2019; published October 23, 2019); Special Master’s Supplemental Report, December 1, 2020
14) Florida – Office of Statewide Prosecution’s Report on Sexual Abuse In the Catholic Church In Florida, November 6, 2020
15) Buffalo NY – Complaint, The People of the State of New York, by Letitia James, Attorney General of the State of New York, v. Diocese of Buffalo, Richard J. Malone, Edward M. Grosz, and Edward B. Scharfenberger, November 23, 2020; see also the Stipulation of Settlement, October 25, 2022
16) Burlington – St. Joseph’s Orphanage – St. Joseph’s Orphanage Task Force Investigation, Vermont Attorney General’s Office, Office of Mayor Miro Weinberger, Chittenden County State’s Attorney’s Office, Vermont State Police, Burlington Police Department, December 14, 2020; same investigative report with the 12 document appendices (48 megabyte PDF)
17) Nebraska – Report on Clergy Sexual Abuse, Office of the Nebraska Attorney General, November 4, 2021
18) Marquette MI – Diocese of Marquette: A Complete Accounting, Dana Nessel, Attorney General, State of Michigan, October 27, 2022
19) Georgia – Report of Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Atlanta and the Diocese of Savannah, Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, dated March 20, 2023, released March 24, 2023
20) Baltimore – Attorney General’s Report on Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, April 5, 2023
21) Illinois – Report on Catholic Clergy Child Sex Abuse, Illinois Attorney General, May 23, 2023
Reports by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
- Karen Terry et al., The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States [a.k.a. the “John Jay Report”] (2004)
- Karen Terry et al., The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States: Supplementary Data Analysis (March 2006)
- Karen Terry et al., The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010 (May 18, 2011) with Errata
Ray Mouton, Thomas Doyle, and Rev. Michael R. Peterson, The Problem of Sexual Molestation by Roman Catholic Clergy (1985)
Other reports available at BA
LISTS AND DATA
- BA’s Database of Accused
- BA’s list of the lists posted by dioceses and religious orders
- Official Catholic Directories available at the Internet Archive
- BA’s guide to the use of the Official Catholic Directory
U.S. CLERGY ABUSE REVELATIONS 1980-2002
The document releases since 2002 in the United States began in the mid-1980s, when attorneys for survivors obtained church documents during discovery. Investigative reporters obtained those documents and deposition transcripts, and during the 1990s, those sources began to move to the center of some stories:
Documents Show Bishops Transferred Known Abuser: Church Officials Say Policies Have Since Changed, by Brooks Egerton with Michael D. Goldhaber, Dallas Morning News (August 31, 1997)
The Survivors of Clergy Abuse Linkup, founded as VOCAL by Jeanne Miller, hosted a conference in Chicago in 1992, a major step in networking survivors, journalists, experts, and attorneys. Linkup’s Missing Link newsletter published summaries of newspaper coverage, and in 1996 created a banner naming 666 accused clergy, published on the Linkup website with reports and other sources.
Also in the 1990s, survivor Frank Fitzpatrick’s Survivor Connections, based in Rhode Island, networked survivors through a newsletter and meetings, and built a private database to help survivors of the same priest connect with each other.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, founded by the late Barbara Blaine in the early 1990s with David Clohessy as its National Director, has networked survivors and built a strong media outreach operation.
Road to Recovery assists survivors of clergy abuse.
Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) is a worldwide organization of human rights’ activists who focus on children’s and victims’ rights joining in common cause to compel the Church to end clerical abuse.
The mission of Awake is to awaken the community to the full reality of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and work for transformation and healing.
BA’s profiles of whistleblowers.
FUTURE RESEARCH IN THE ARCHIVES
Syllabus, The Abuse Crisis in Modern Christianity, Fall 2022, Washington University in St. Louis, Professor R. Marie Griffith, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics
Syllabus, Contextualizing the Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis, Fall 2017, Associate Professor Kent L. Brintnall, Department of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina – Charlotte
Please let us know if you are interested in working with documents in the BishopAccountability.org archive.
PHOTOGRAPH CAPTIONS
1) Doris Reisinger and Terence McKiernan at the 2022 Berlin conference.
2) Survivor Gregory Ford at age 6 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
3) Attorney Eric MacLeish and the Chabot letter.
4) Senior Assistant Attorney General of New Hampshire N. William Delker with released archive regarding the Diocese of Manchester.
5) Damian and Bob Eckert, survivors of Father Robert Van Handel OFM.
6) Attorney General Josh Shapiro, survivors, and reporters at the Pennsylvania grand jury report’s release.
7) Tom Doyle, Jeff Anderson, Jeanne Miller, Richard Sipe, Fr. Andrew Greeley, and Jason Berry at the VOCAL/Linkup 1992 Conference.
8) SNAP founder Barbara Blaine in Chicago, June 2015.