According to a Wednesday investigation, over 150 Catholic priests from the Archdiocese of Baltimore sexually molested hundreds of children and church officials covered it up for decades.
According to a years-long investigation made public by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, church leaders were more concerned with covering up the alleged abuse than they were with defending the victims or putting an end to it.
150 Catholic Priests Allegedly Abuse Children
The alleged assault allegedly occurred over an 80-year period in several locations around Maryland. In the investigation, one deacon even admitted to abusing more than 100 kids.
The Baltimore report also predicted that there would likely be a lot more victims. On Wednesday, a bill to lift the statute of limitations on civil claims involving child abuse was approved by the state legislature. Democratic governor Wes Moore is anticipated to sign it.
The investigation was started in 2019 by Brian Frosh, the former attorney general of Maryland, and it was finished in November. On Wednesday, it received its formal release.
The inquiry, according to Maryland’s attorney general Anthony Brown, reveals “pervasive, insidious, and ongoing abuse” by members of the church’s hierarchy.
In the course of the state investigation, more than 100,000 pages of records from the 1940s were examined. Also, investigators spoke with a large number of victims and witnesses. Joseph Maskell, a priest who worked as a chaplain and counselor at a Catholic high school, is said to have assaulted at least 39 people.
Before his death in 2001, he refuted the accusations and was never charged criminally. Father Laurence Brett assaulted around 20 victims while working as a chaplain at a Catholic high school for boys decades earlier, in the 1960s and 1970s.
Although several of the victims came forward, he was never punished legally before his passing in 2010. The investigation revealed that abuse claims were repressed by church leaders. In certain cases, victims were compelled to inform abusive priests about their abuse.
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A Purported Cover-Up
Based on the Baltimore investigation, church officials were more concerned with hiding abuse than with helping victims or putting an end to it.
In other cases, victims of abuse ended up denouncing the abuse to abusive priests. However, the investigation states that when law enforcement did learn about abuse claims, police, and prosecutors were frequently submissive and uninterested in looking into what church authorities knew and when.
In the roughly 500-page report, there are several examples of officials protecting accused clergy by letting them stay in the ministry, allowing them to retire with financial support instead of being fired, and failing to disclose alleged abuse to law authorities.
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