Officials say the abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore – dating back to the 1940s – was “pervasive, pernicious and persistent.”
Officials in the United States have released a report detailing decades of sexual abuse by people associated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Maryland.
The office of Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown released its 450-page report on Wednesday, identifying 158 priests accused of molesting more than 600 victims since the 1940s.
The release of the redacted report concludes a four-year saga that began when an investigation was launched in 2019 by former Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh. The investigation concluded in November, after investigators reviewed more than 100,000 pages of documents, some of which were nearly 80 years old.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Brown condemned the actions of the local Catholic archdiocese.
“The irrefutable history revealed by this investigation is one of pervasive, pernicious and persistent abuse by priests and other personnel of the archdiocese,” he said. The report, he explained, described a cycle of “repeated dismissal or cover-up of that abuse by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.”
Following the conclusion of the investigation last year, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore issued an apology “to the survivors of the victim who were harmed by a minister of the church and who were harmed by those who failed to protect them.”
Lori expressed “newfound shame, deep contrition and heartfelt sympathy” on behalf of the archdiocese.
Earlier this year, a judge ordered a redacted version of the report to be made public.
The report painted a chilling picture of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the oldest Roman Catholic diocese in the country. It oversaw parishes, schools, and congregations across much of the state.
In some cases, some church institutions housed more than one abuser at a time.
For example, 11 abusers lived and worked in St Mark Parish in the Catonsville community between 1964 and 2004.
“The staggering ubiquity of the abuse itself underscores the guilt of the Church hierarchy,” the report said.
“The sheer number of abusers and victims, the depravity of the abusers’ behavior, and the frequency with which known abusers have been allowed to continue to prey on children are astonishing.”
The report adds to a growing list of sexual abuse allegations against the Roman Catholic Church in the US and around the world.
Revelations of widespread abuse — and systematic cover-ups — began with a 2002 report by the Boston Globe newspaper, which found that the local archdiocese had spent decades trying to cover up sexual misconduct.
In recent years, the Catholic Church in the US has paid an estimated $3.2 billion to settle clergy abuse cases, according to BishopAccountability.org, which tracks the case.
Wednesday’s report notes that new national policies, following the Boston Globe unveiling, have significantly improved the church’s internal handling of reports of sexual abuse. But it still found numerous gaps in the way the Archdiocese of Baltimore combats abuse.
The report said the archdiocese had prepared a public list of abusers that did not include all the cases it was aware of. According to the report, some alleged abusers were also allowed to retire with financial assistance, rather than being removed.
The investigation also revealed that the archdiocese failed to report many allegations of sexual abuse to authorities, conduct adequate investigations, remove abusers from the ministry or limit their access to children.
In some cases, victims reported sexual assaults to priests who were themselves abusive, prosecutors wrote.
The report’s release on Wednesday comes during Holy Week, considered one of the most sacred times of the year in Christianity as it comes before Easter Sunday.
It indicated that the number of casualties is probably much higher. The report focuses largely on the years prior to 2002.