The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office has released findings of its investigation into allegations of sexual abuse in a trio of Roman Catholic dioceses in the state.
Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a press release that there’s evidence that more than 270 clerics in the dioceses of Fall River, Springfield, and Worcester abused nearly 1,000 children.
Campbell said her office's investigation spanned seven decades. But despite the crimes outlined in the report, the AGO is not seeking criminal charges.
"We looked carefully at whether criminal prosecution was still possible in the cases we identified," she explained. "Some of the conduct we identified was not a crime under Massachusetts law at the time the incident occurred. We cannot apply a criminal law retroactively. In other cases, a statute of limitations has expired, a later change in the law does not allow prosecutors to go back and reopen those cases."
She says one case referred to the Worcester County District resulted in criminal charges.
The Democrat said the dioceses have implemented “important reforms” since the widespread exposure of clergy sex abuse in Massachusetts in 2002. But the investigation uncovered “decades of failures by diocesan leaders to adequately respond to allegations of child sexual abuse.”
The attorney general's office said the Worcester Diocese is the only diocese in Massachusetts that does not maintain a publicly accessible list of accused clergy.
In addition to calls for increased transparency, enforcement, and prevention strategies by the dioceses, Campbell is calling on the state legislature to pass legislation to benefit survivors.
Campbell is seeking the elimination of a $20,000 charitable immunity cap for civil claims of child sex abuse, the elimination of the statute of limitations for such claims, and the creation of an indefinite lookback period for survivors whose civil claims have already expired.