Some crimes are so incomprehensible that even the written record echoes the sound of human suffering. That was true Wednesday when the state of Massachusetts released its report on the scope of the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal there. At least 250 priests and church employees in Boston abused more than 1,000 people over a period of 60 years, protected by a church hierarchy that stonewalled police and misled parents. The nefarious role the Boston Archdiocese played as a feeder for crimes that spread nationwide makes the experience and the findings there worthy of particular attention.
Most Americans know by now the broad outline of the sex abuse scandal. Priests assaulted children, and church leaders who were aware of the crimes protected the predators from the authorities. The report by the Massachusetts attorney general, based on a 16-month grand jury investigation, describes how the Boston Archdiocese pulled it off - by coddling abusers, misleading police, concealing records and silencing those within the church who pushed internally for reform.
Attorney General Thomas Reilly declined to file charges, citing weak state child abuse reporting laws in place when the assaults occurred. But he blamed church officials, and especially American bishops, for the secrecy that cleared the way for attacks on hundreds of children. Said Reilly: "The mistreatment of children was so massive and so prolonged that it borders on the unbelievable." Abusers were moved to unsuspecting parishes, or sent for psychiatric treatment at church-affiliated institutions. The Archdiocese never sought to understand why so many abusive priests were graduated from Boston's principal seminary. Early reform procedures were a joke, Boston bishops "clearly preferred" to keep abusive priests in the pastoral ministry and "on the rare occasions" when police became involved, church officials "never revealed all that they knew."
This moral indictment of the Archdiocese, which has long been a training ground for America's Catholic leadership, is in a way more damning because true justice is beyond the public's grasp. Yet Reilly was right to push ahead, for as he said: "It is essential to create an official public record of what occurred so that this type of widespread abuse of children might never happen again here or elsewhere." It's not clear the bishops are listening yet.
