AG’s probe into dioceses in Gateway Cities is taking years. Why the delay?
The Attorney General's Office over the years has been cagey when it comes to the status of its investigation into decades of clergy sex abuse in three of the state's Catholic dioceses.
Part of the reason might be because the investigation appears to have been before a grand jury.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell said in a 2024 interview that she "inherited a report that was completed" by the time she took over leadership of the office from now-Gov. Maura Healey and was waiting for a judge's approval to release it.
Last week, the Rhode Island attorney general issued a report detailing decades of abuse perpetrated by priests in that state, finding that there were credible allegations that 75 members of the clergy abused more than 300 children stretching back to 1950. It was one of dozens of reports released over the years by attorneys general across the country looking at the scope of clergy sex abuse in the Catholic church.
So where's the report now? Once again, Campbell said in a statement last week that the law prevented her from commenting on her office's efforts, but it was "taking the appropriate steps" to disclose the results of the investigation.
"The legal requirements for the disclosure of Rhode Island's report were different from those that apply to the disclosure of our work, in part, because of the investigatory tools that were used," Campbell said in her statement.
When Rhode Island prosecutors released their report, they lamented that they were unable to use a grand jury because of that state's laws.
Asked what laws are compelling Campbell's silence on the clergy sex abuse report, her office pointed to the statute governing grand juries . A spokesperson added that the report is complete. When asked whether the investigation was reopened, the AG's Office said it does not confirm nor deny its investigations.
Proceedings before grand juries are secret, and officials cannot disclose what occurs before them unless a judge tells them to.
Even efforts to release that information, such as a motion, are kept from the public's eye, according to a spokesperson for the state's judiciary, unless there is permission to release it.
For survivors and advocates, many of whom spoke with investigators for hours and gave them thousands of pages of documents, the yearslong delay has been frustrating.
"Worcester and Springfield and Fall River are no less important than the Archdiocese of Boston, even though they're smaller," said Terry McKiernan, president and founder of Bishop Accountability, which collects information on the clergy sex-abuse crisis. "The survivors who were raped by priests in those dioceses are no less important."
Investigators involved in the probe reportedly told at least one survivor that the dioceses had received grand jury subpoenas.
Campbell said in her statement she understood the frustration with the delayed report, adding that survivors showed "tremendous courage" to share their accounts.
Asked about grand jury subpoenas and whether they were opposing the release of the report, a spokesperson for the Worcester Diocese did not return a request for comment.
The Fall River Diocese spokesperson, John Kearns, said the diocese would not comment about the AG's report in response to questions from The Republican. "It is the diocese's policy to fully cooperate with law enforcement, including the Attorney General's Office," Kearns wrote.
Carolee McGrath, spokesperson for the Diocese in Springfield, also declined to comment, saying the diocese complied with the law and, because the matter began with the attorney general, questions should be directed there.
A spokesperson for Healey directed questions about the report to the Attorney General's Office.
Mitchell Garabedian, a longtime attorney representing clergy sex-abuse victims in Massachusetts, said the Attorney General's Office first began contacting him in 2021, seeking to obtain interview and victim impact statements from some of his clients.
"And it's my understanding that the Attorney General's Office has been working on the report, but they have not come to conclusion yet," Garabedian said.
He doesn't know where the investigation stands.
Over the years, he has sought to obtain clarification of the status of the report. He had communicated with the AG's Office as recently as late last year on the matter, when the office said it didn't have an update for him.
On Thursday, it once again told him it did not have any updates on the report.
Clergy probes in RI and beyond
For their investigation, Rhode Island prosecutors reached agreements with the Providence Diocese to obtain its internal records, because the law in the state did not provide a way to release grand jury reports.
Even still, church leaders delayed releasing documents or ignored investigators, the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office said , which stretched out investigations and limited some of its findings.
"A grand jury approach to this investigation would have allowed us to ask and/or compel witnesses to testify," wrote Tim Rondeau, spokesperson for the Rhode Island attorney general.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha used the report's release to advocate for a change to Ocean State law that would provide for the release of grand jury reports.
Grand jury reports, Rondeau said, are an "essential tool for public awareness and accountability in matters that are not prosecutable for any number of reasons, but which nevertheless implicate the public interest and warrant the public's attention."
McKiernan, of Bishop Accountability, said both the report out of Rhode Island and the report pending with the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office are part of a wave of investigations launched across the country after a 2018 report released by the Pennsylvania attorney general into decades of clergy sex abuse there.
For two years, a grand jury in Pennsylvania investigated clergy sex abuse in six dioceses across the state. It reviewed about 500,000 pages of documents obtained from the church through subpoena. It heard the testimonies of victims and priests in the dozens.
The grand jury found 1,000 victims and credible allegations against 300 priests, although the grand jury said it believed the number of victims was much larger. Many of the cases were unable to be prosecuted because church leaders hid the abuse.
In response, attorneys general nationwide considered launching investigations of their own. At the time, then-Attorney General Healey said she began discussions with the Archdiocese of Boston and attorneys about how to bolster protections against child sex abuse in Massachusetts, according to The Boston Globe .
In Western Massachusetts, at least one attorney had called on Healey to do more.
Greenfield attorney John Stobierski , who represented well over 100 clergy sex-abuse victims, said he had long advocated for law enforcement to take a sweeping look at the Springfield Diocese.
The Rev. Richard R. Lavigne, a Roman Catholic priest, pleads guilty in Essex Superior Court to two counts of indecently assaulting two adolescent boys, on June 25, 1992, in Newburyport. Investigators were preparing to seek an arrest warrant for the defrocked Lavigne, long considered a suspect in the 1972 killing of altar boy Danny Croteau, of Springfield, shortly before his death on Friday, May 21, 2021. (Scott Maguire / Associated Press, File)
The Springfield Diocese, he said, could have been one of the worst in the country for clergy sex abuse. Two of its bishops were credibly accused. One priest, Richard Lavigne, died just as the Hampden district attorney moved to charge him in connection with the death of Danny Croteau, a Springfield altar boy who was found dead in the 1970s.
While the diocese commissioned a report on the activities of former Bishop Christopher Weldon, Stobierski said the report merely scratched the surface.
A report by state investigators, he hoped, would tell a more complete picture.
"I think it's beneficial for the Catholic Church to know how they would let a diocese run amok, so it doesn't happen again," Stobierski said.
Flowers on his grave frame a portrait of Danny Croteau during a graveside memorial service for the 13-year-old altar boy authorities determined was killed by his parish priest in 1972. (Don Treeger / The Republican, File)
Years before, Stobierski shared what he could from his files with state investigators, including more than 60,000 pages of records from the diocese and depositions of former members of the clergy.
That included former Bishop Thomas Dupre, who resigned in 2004 after being accused of decades-old sexual misconduct. Stobierski said he was only able to subpoena him by having someone dress up as a delivery person to deliver a "present" on his birthday.
The Most Rev. Joseph F. Maguire, right, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, is shown with the Most Rev. Thomas Dupre, center, who was ordained that day as Springfield's auxiliary bishop, and Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law on May 31, 1990. A 2009 civil suit against Maguire and Dupre involved allegations that they knowingly allowed a priest with a history of child molestation to remain in ministry. (UNION NEWS, FILE)
But it's been years since investigators reached out to Stobierski, and if there were grand jury proceedings, neither he nor his clients were asked to testify, he said.
Grand jury proceedings did not delay the earlier report into the Archdiocese of Boston made in the years following The Boston Globe's reporting in 2002, he said. He wonders if prosecutors are hesitant to release the report into the Springfield Diocese because it contains "uncomfortable truths" about corruption that spread beyond the church and impugns local law enforcement.
Each inquiry a bit different
Over the years, grand juries and attorneys general from around the country have issued almost 30 reports about clergy sex abuse.
"Each one of these AGs does their investigation in a different way, and they are limited or not to some extent by the laws of the state where they operate," McKiernan said.
When Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown released that state's probe of the Archdiocese of Baltimore in 2023, he first needed permission from a judge, as he used a grand jury to investigate clergy sex abuse there. The report was redacted, and Maryland prosecutors needed to contact people mentioned in the report before its release.
The attorney general in New Jersey attempted to empanel a grand jury for the purposes of investigating the diocese there in response to the 2018 Pennsylvania report, but a diocese objected and managed to keep its court filing sealed.
Last year, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled the state had a right to investigate the entity with a grand jury.
"It was, judicially, a deep, dark secret why the investigation was not going forward," McKiernan said. He added that there's "no indication" a similar situation is playing out behind closed courtroom doors in Massachusetts.
"If the report is being held up in part because they wish it were a better report," McKiernan said, "I would say, 'Well, release it. Take the hit for it not being a decent report, a good report, and sharpen your pencil and get to work again.'"
Garabedian said the report's release would accomplish several things. It would give survivors a measure of validation. Many think they were the only ones abused and feel like they're "out in the wilderness," he said.
McKiernan said he gave investigators pages of documents he had on the House of Affirmation in the Worcester Diocese. That center was co-founded by a Worcester priest removed from the priesthood after being accused of embezzlement and child sexual abuse, according to the Rhode Island report.
Former Bishop Accountability board member Phil Saviano, a clergy-abuse survivor who died in 2021, spoke with investigators for hours while in hospice.
The survivors who shared their stories with state investigators deserve an explanation, McKiernan said.
"They have a responsibility to be decent to those people, and instead what they're getting is more silence," McKiernan said. "Silence is what they got when they tried to get redress from the church originally, and now the attorney general is doing it to them."
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