BALTIMORE — A grand jury report revealing the devastating extent of child sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore and its efforts to cover up the problem became public Wednesday, four years after the start of an investigation survivors had long lobbied for and on the cusp of efforts to expand liability for abusers and the institutions that employed them.
Released more than four months after the Maryland Attorney General’s Office revealed it had finished its investigation, the public version of the report has been redacted and is not expected to identify diocesan officials who worked to cover up sexual abuse within their ranks.
Priests who abused children were often known to the diocese, yet little was done to stop them, according to the report. For example, Father Lawrence Brett admitted in 1964 to abusing a boy in Connecticut. Church officials there sent him to treatment in New Mexico, where he continued to abuse boys, and he then was transferred to Calvert Hall College High School in Baltimore, where Brett abused at least 20 more, the report states.
“We hope to make public for the first time, enormous scope and scale of the abuse and concealment perpetrated by the Archdiocese of Baltimore,” Attorney General Anthony Brown said Wednesday afternoon.
While the report covers the Baltimore archdiocese, Brown said the office issued subpoenas to two other dioceses that include parts of Maryland as part of ongoing investigations into abuse in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, which covers part of the Eastern Shore.
“While our focus has been on completing the arduous, difficult task,” of the Baltimore report, Brown told reporters shortly before its release, “we did not sit idle when it came when it comes to the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., in the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware. So, those investigations are ongoing.”
Titled “Clergy Abuse in Maryland,” the Baltimore report is nearly 500 pages long and tells how 158 clergy sexually abused and tortured more than 600 children and young adults over an 80-year period beginning in the 1940s. The Baltimore archdiocese covers Baltimore City and nine counties in Central and Western Maryland.
The Most Rev. William E. Lori, archbishop of Baltimore since 2012, called the report’s contents “shocking and soul searing” in a statement Wednesday. It is important that the church “shine God’s light” on what happened within the institution, he said.
“It is difficult for most to imagine that such evil acts could have actually occurred,” Lori said. “For victim-survivors everywhere, they know the hard truth: These evil acts did occur.”
The Baltimore archdiocese has identified 152 credibly accused priests on its website. The attorney general’s report is expected to include previously unknown names, go into greater detail than previously known about the abuse, as well as how the church covered it up and protected abusers.
Wednesday’s release falls both during the conclusion of Lent, the 40-day period of fasting and repentance that precedes Easter, and Holy Week, the most sacred week on the Christian liturgical calendar, a time when believers commemorate the suffering, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus that lie at the core of their faith.
