More than 270 Catholic clerics sexually abused nearly 1,000
children across three Massachusetts dioceses
over several decades, according to a report released by the state’s attorney
general’s office on Wednesday.
The eight-year-long investigation did not result in new
indictments, the office said, claiming that some conduct identified was not a
crime under Massachusetts law at the time it occurred, and that in other cases
the applicable statute of limitations had expired.
However, three cases were referred to different district
attorney’s offices and one of those resulted in criminal charges. The majority
of the abuse occurred before 2002.
“The evidence gathered during this investigation also shows
that, for decades, and especially before 2002, church officials in all three
dioceses knew about the sexual abuse of children yet did not take effective
action to prevent it or to examine the institutional failures of leadership
that led to scores of children being victimized at the hands of abusive
priests,” the report stated.
The attorney general’s office said the report was “the first
comparable public accounting of the institutional failures within the Fall
River, Springfield and Worcester dioceses”.
The abuses in the archdiocese
of Boston drew international attention after the Boston Globe
published its Pulitzer-winning coverage in 2002, and prompted other
investigations around the world that found similar cases of sexual abuse.
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