MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe
By J.M. Lawrence GLOBE CORRESPONDENT JUNE 27, 2016
In a New Bedford courtroom, Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Robert L. Steadman weighed the unfathomable crimes of pedophile former priest James R. Porter against claims that the Catholic Church hierarchy had enabled Porter’s sexual abuse of dozens of children in the 1960s.
The depths of the church sex abuse scandal had yet to be exposed on that December day in 1993 as Judge Steadman heard 22 of Porter’s victims describe shattered childhoods, suicide attempts, and lost faith. Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Porter to serve 36 to 50 years in prison. The defense argued Porter was a repentant sex offender who needed treatment, not jail.
“The defendant stands before me today as an effigy, representing all the other named and unnamed child abusers,” Judge Steadman said, according to a New York Times account. “Yet justice requires that James Porter, the symbol, be cast aside and that James Porter, the man, be judged.”
Porter had shown “complete disregard of the physical, spiritual, and psychological impact” of his crimes, said the judge, who ordered Porter to serve 18 to 20 years for sexually assaulting 28 boys and girls.
Judge Steadman, who spent 17 years on the Superior Court bench and was named chief justice in 1988, died June 14 in the Pat Roche Hospice Home in Hingham from complications of a recent fall. He was 90 and lived in Hanover.
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