Campbell's report counts nearly 1,000 abused children in three dioceses

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell released a report on 30 September that puts numbers on child sexual abuse in three Catholic dioceses outside Boston. Investigators found evidence that more than 270 clerics abused nearly 1,000 children in the dioceses of Fall River, Springfield and Worcester. The office reviewed more than 300,000 pages and interviewed more than 100 people, among them survivors, advocates, lawyers, clergy and diocesan staff. The inquiry began in 2019.

Campbell's line at the news conference was specific. "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." The report covers about a century of files. In many cases the priest has died, or the allegation arrived too late for a charge. The document is a record and a reform demand, not a set of new indictments.

What the three dioceses did with what they knew

The report says leaders in the three dioceses knew priests and other church personnel were abusing children and did not do enough to stop it or to examine how the institution had failed. Investigators found cases in which leaders did not act on allegations and warning signs, moved accused priests to other parishes without saying why, returned priests to ministry after treatment without enough supervision, failed to enforce restrictions, hid the reason a priest was removed, and did not consistently tell the police.

The Boston archdiocese scandal of the early 2000s produced years of files, lawsuits and a national shift in how American dioceses talk about abuse. This report looks past Boston on purpose. Fall River, Springfield and Worcester were not the centre of that earlier storm. Campbell's office says the same practices, including keeping priests in ministry for years after reports, continued there even after the reforms that followed Boston. Suspensions sometimes came without a word to parishioners or to other priests about the reason.

Why so few cases can be charged

Limitation periods close most of these files. A crime alleged from the 1970s or 1980s, against a priest who has since died, cannot be tried. The attorney general's power in that situation is the report itself, and any referral where a living accused person and a living limitation period still overlap. The office did not, in the material released on Wednesday, announce a batch of new charges. It announced a count: more than 270 clerics, nearly 1,000 children, three dioceses, 300,000 pages.

The page count is a measure of what the dioceses kept. Abuse inquiries elsewhere have stalled on destroyed personnel files. Here the paper existed. The failure the report describes is not an absence of records. It is what leaders did with records they had: transfers without disclosure, returns to ministry, restrictions that were not enforced. A file that notes an allegation, and a later entry that assigns the same priest to a new parish, is the document type this investigation was built to find.

What the report asks for next

Campbell's office called for reforms to protect children and to support survivors. The practical items in that kind of report are usually outside supervision of diocesan review boards, a duty to report that does not stop at the chancery, and publication of the names of credibly accused clergy. The three dioceses already operate under the national Dallas charter rules adopted after Boston. The report's claim is that those rules were not enough in these three places, and that priests remained in ministry for years after reports. The open question is whether the dioceses will publish their own name lists matched against Campbell's count of 270, or contest the tally. Either response will be checkable against the 300,000 pages her office has already read.