More Than 600 Children Were Abused In Baltimore Archdiocese Over 8 Decades: Report

BALTIMORE, MD — More than 600 children in the Baltimore archdiocese were victims of clergy sexual abuse over eight decades, the Maryland attorney general said Thursday in a court filing seeking to release the names of those accused.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore in 2019 released the names of 126 priests accused of sexual abuse, but few details have been disclosed since then.

Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh Thursday filed a motion to release the office’s 463-page report of its investigation of child sexual abuse in the archdiocese to the public.

“For decades, survivors reported sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests and for decades the Church covered up the abuse rather than holding the abusers accountable and protecting its congregations. The Archdiocese of Baltimore was no exception,” the motion filed with the Circuit Court of Baltimore City said.

Maryland's probe was the second in the country by a state prosecutor, after Pennsylvania, according to The Washington Post. Frosh's push to release the report comes on the 20th anniversary year of the emergence of the Catholic church's sexual abuse scandal in the United States, starting with an investigative series by The Boston Globe.

“Now is the time for reckoning,” said the filing by Frosh's office. Because the report includes information from grand jury testimony, a judge’s approval is required, the newspaper said. “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.”

Victims ranged in age from preschool to age 18, Frosh said.

The Post said the report identifies 115 priests who have already been prosecuted or identified by the church as “credibly accused,” and that it includes another 43 priests “accused of sexual abuse but not identified publicly by the Archdiocese.”

The criminal investigation of child sexual abuse perpetrated by priests and other employees of the Archdiocese of Baltimore included a review of hundreds of thousands of documents dating back to the 1940s in response to grand jury subpoenas, Frosh said in a news release.

The report, titled “Clergy Abuse in Maryland,” identifies 115 priests who were prosecuted for sex abuse and/or identified publicly by the archdiocese as having been “credibly accused” of sexual abuse. It also includes an additional 43 priests accused of sexual abuse but not identified publicly by the archdiocese, the Associated Press reported, quoting the court records.

“The Report summarizes the sexual abuse and physical torture perpetrated by all 158 priests and the Archdiocese’s response to that abuse,” the court filing said.

The archdiocese did not immediately return a request for comment.

Both boys and girls were abused, according to the court filing, with ages ranging from preschool through young adulthood. Hundreds more victims are likely, the report said.

“Although no parish was safe, some congregations and schools were assigned multiple abusive priests, and a few had more than one sexually abusive priest at the same time,” the court filing said. “One congregation was assigned 11 sexually abusive priests over 40 years.”

The investigation also revealed that the archdiocese failed to report many allegations of sexual abuse, conduct adequate investigations of alleged abuse, remove abusers from the ministry or restrict their access to children.

“Instead, it went to great lengths to keep the abuse secret,” the court filing said, according to AP. “While the Archdiocese reported a large number of allegations to police, especially in later years, for decades it worked to ensure that the perpetrators would not face justice.”

David Lorenz, Maryland leader of SNAP, an organization that advocates for church abuse victims, said he was struggling to digest the scope of abuse and called the report “disturbing.”

“This the tip of the iceberg,” he told The Washington Post, “and I just wish I could reach out to each of them and say: ‘It’s okay, it’s not your fault. Please seek help. There are people out there helping, who want to help, who will believe you, who won’t ridicule you, who won’t deny what happened to you. No matter how bad you think it is, it was never your fault.’ ”

Related: 23 Priests Added To Child Sex Abuse List: Baltimore Archdiocese

There is zero tolerance for any bishop, priest, lay employee or volunteer credibly accused of the sexual abuse of a minor or the sexual harassment of an adult, Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori said in 2019.

"...There are a lot of people who are looking at the church and saying, ‘Have you told us everything you know? Is there more to this story?’ And we want to increase that transparency," Auxiliary Bishop Adam J. Parker told the Catholic Review in April 2019 when the diocese added over 20 names of abusers, all deceased, to a list it had earlier released.

In 2002, the Archdiocese of Baltimore published a list of 57 men who had been credibly accused of child sex abuse. Others were added in 2018 after a grand jury report released by the Pennsylvania Attorney General in August 2018 named priests who had an assignment in Maryland.

RELATED: List Of Maryland Priests Accused Of Child Sexual Abuse

To qualify for the list released in 2018, the Independent Review Board determined a priest must have met one of these criteria:

• A single allegation was substantiated.
• Allegations were made by more than one victim.
• The clergyman's name was published elsewhere connected to a child sex abuse allegation.

An accused person’s name was not added if an allegation of child sexual abuse came from a third party, and the archdiocese could not speak with the victim; or if it could not be substantiated, according to the archdiocese.

"...Not publishing a name does not mean we don’t believe the victim who came forward. It simply means we could not substantiate it," Parker told the Catholic Review.

A complete list of priests accused of child sex abuse that the church has released is posted on the Archdiocese of Baltimore's website.

How To Report Abuse

Victims of child sex abusers linked to schools or places of worship or those with knowledge of such abuse may contact the Maryland Office of the Attorney General's hotline at 410-576-6312 or file a report online to report@oag.state.md.us.

People may also report suspected abuse by clergy, employees, or volunteers of the Archdiocese of Baltimore to the Archdiocesan Office of Child and Youth Protection at 410-547-5348 or the Victims Assistance Line at 1-866-417-7469. People may also file a report online through the secure EthicsPoint site.