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Probe of Baltimore Archdiocese finds over 600 clergy sex abuse victims
In court filing, attorney general’s office said there are ‘almost certainly hundreds more’
and that church leaders failed to report many allegations or remove abusers
By Michelle Boorstein and Erin Cox
Washington Post
Updated November 18, 2022 at 2:27 p.m. EST|
Published November 17, 2022 at 2:27 p.m. EST
A nearly four-year investigation of the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore tallied more than 600 young victims of clergy sexual abuse over 80 years, a court filing by the Maryland attorney general said Thursday. The probe, the second in the country by a state prosecutor, after Pennsylvania’s, seeks to bring accountability and detail to cases long covered up or shrouded by statutes of limitation.
The filing by Attorney General Brian Frosh (D) comes in the 20th anniversary year of an investigative series by the Boston Globe that dug into the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the United States. Major reforms and multibillion-dollar legal settlements have reduced the number of accusations over the decades, but advocates in and out of the church say that full restitution has never come and such chronicles are important.
“Now is the time for reckoning,” said the 35-page filing in Baltimore City Circuit Court that asks a judge to approve the release of the full 456-page report. Because the report includes information from grand jury testimony, a judge’s approval is required. “Publicly airing the transgressions of the Church is critical to holding people and institutions accountable and improving the way sexual abuse allegations are handled going forward,” the attorney general argued in the filing.
The filing says the report identifies victims from preschool to young adulthood. A spokesperson for Frosh said they reached to age 18.
It was not immediately clear Thursday how many of the priests and victims, if any, may have been newly uncovered by the report.
The filing says the report identifies 115 priests who have already been prosecuted or identified by the church as “credibly accused,” and that it includes an additional 43 priests “accused of sexual abuse but not identified publicly by the Archdiocese.” That is 158 priests.
The archdiocese lists 152 priests on its website as credibly accused.
Many dioceses have lists of credibly accused priests, and their systems for organizing the lists vary. They can include priests ordained in a diocese, or priests serving in a diocese when abuses allegedly took place, or priests who happened to be in that diocese when abuse allegedly took place.
In a statement late Thursday, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori said the overlap between the 152 and 158 isn’t yet clear, but he added that the archdiocese’s list of credibly accused clergy “does not include the names of priests or brothers who died before a single accusation of child abuse was received, unless the allegation could be corroborated by a third party or unless a second allegation was made against the same deceased cleric.”
This assumes that the paedos are innocent and the victims are liars.
There is more on this story at The Washington Post.
Order that runs Terenure College states 56 people have made
allegations of child sexual abuse against it
Carmelites reiterate “unreserved” apology for historical cases of abuse
Most of the abuse is related to Terenure College, pictured, and the former Carmelite College in Moate
which closed in 1996
Ronan McGreevy
Fri, Nov 18 2022 - 20:13
The Carmelites have confirmed that 56 individuals have made allegations of historical sex abuse against 21 members of the Order.
Most of the abuse is related to Terenure College and the former Carmelite College in Moate which closed in 1996. The rest is related to pastoral activities.
The order has confirmed that €1.6 million has been paid in settlements to 26 victims. This sum does not include victims’ therapeutic and legal costs which are paid separately.
This figure includes settlements paid to victims of a former lay teacher at Terenure College, who is serving a prison sentence for sexual abuse.
The statement by the Order does not name the lay teacher, but John McClean last year pleaded guilty to 27 counts of indecently assaulting 23 former pupils between 1973 and 1990. He was sentenced to eight years in jail.
Forty-one allegations of child sexual abuse have been reported against twelve Carmelites who worked in school settings dating back to the early 1960′s
The alleged perpetrators of the abuse are 12 deceased members of the Carmelites, six living members and three former members of the Order.
In its statement, the Carmelites said members of the Order who have had sexual abuse allegations made against them and are still alive are subject to a monitoring process within its safeguarding structures.
This information is also shared with An Garda Síochána and, with regard to children, Tusla, Child & Family Agency.
The Order reiterated an “unreserved apology” to those who were abused in its care. It had previously apologised last year after McClean was sentenced.
“We know that words of apology cannot suffice for the pain and suffering endured by victims and survivors of abuse, sexual, physical, and emotional, perpetrated by Carmelites,” the Order stated.
“We remain wholly committed to providing effective and meaningful support to those who were abused while in our care.
“We encourage anyone who has concerns regarding child safeguarding to contact the statutory authorities, An Garda Síochána and Tusla and if they wish, the Carmelite Safeguarding Office. They will have our full support.”
Now, who is going to trust you?
The Spiritan Congregation is the new name for the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, a strictly male offshoot of the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary, a Catholic order. It is my contention that they had to change their name because of the fact that "A total of 230 alleged victims across Ireland have accused 77 clerics of the Spiritans of abuse."
Child sexual abuse: Restorative justice ‘a confidential process’,
says practitioner appointed to Spiritan programme
Independent practitioner Tim Chapman says he is a ‘teacher, lecturer, university
researcher and practitioner in restorative practice for last 20 years’
Tim Chapman: Restorative justice 'voluntary for both sides. It only works if both sides want to go ahead with it.'
Photograph: PA
Patsy McGarry
Wed Nov 16 2022 - 21:09
The Spiritan Congregation has set up a restorative justice programme comprised of independent experts to engage with survivors of historical abuse at schools and institutions run by the congregation.
Tim Chapman, who has been appointed to lead the restorative justice programme launched at Wednesday’s RDS press conference, described himself there as “a teacher, lecturer, university researcher and a practitioner in restorative practice and have been for the last 20 years”.
An independent restorative justice practitioner, he has been chairman of the Board of the European Forum for Restorative Justice since 2016 and is visiting professor at Glasgow’s Strathclyde University and at the Università degli Studi di Sassari in Sardinia.
A law graduate of the University of Warwick in England, he graduated with an MSc in applied social studies from the University of Ulster in 1975 before becoming assistant chief probation officer in Northern Ireland from 1975 until 1999. He has been a criminal justice consultant since then and was visiting lecturer in restorative practices at the University of Ulster University for 11 years until 2019.
Restorative justice, he said on Wednesday, was “an informal process which allows somebody who has been harmed to engage in dialogue with the person or the body they say is harming them. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the last year in this project with various people. It requires a confidential process, it’s totally voluntary for both sides. It only works if both sides want to go ahead with it.”
He had been approached by the four men abused at Willow Park and Blackrock College, who hosted the press conference alongside Spiritan provincial Fr Martin Kelly, “during the summer last year, 2021, to talk to them about the possibility of a restorative approach to child sexual abuse in the schools.”
He “met with the Spiritans and the project got going in September last year, with a meeting”. The Spiritans “I must say, showed great commitment in trying to fit in with the wishes and the needs of the victims,” he said.
‘Blackrock and Willow Park’
Over the past year he had “met 19 ex-students of Blackrock and Willow Park. They’ve all been abused. The nature of the abuse is depressingly similar but the impact on them, their stories, are all unique to them,” he said. “Two pressing cases are with the gardaí.” There had been nine restorative meetings “with Spiritans and two [school] principals”.
For him, in meeting the men making allegations of abuse, “the extraordinary thing is that they remember it as if it was yesterday. And we’re talking of things that may have happened 40, more than 40 years ago. But they can still smell the perpetrator, they can still see the saliva on the edge of his mouth, they can still feel the hand on them. It’s very difficult to listen to.
“And then they would talk about the impact it has had on their lives and that varies again. Some of them, on the surface you’d think are very, very successful people, but underneath they’re still carrying a very hurt 12-year old child inside them, for most of their lives.”
There was also “a certain anger that it has taken so long for them to have the opportunity to speak about it”, he said.
He added that Spiritans’ safeguarding officer Liam Lally and Fr Kelly “have responded with great compassion. They have believed the stories, which is very important, because some of these individuals told the story when they were kids and were not believed.”
Can someone tell me, is there a single Catholic Order which does not have a history of child sex abuse?
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