BOSTON (MA)
Boston Public Radio, WGBH [Boston MA]
October 16, 2024
By Katie Lannan
A report into clergy abuse across multiple dioceses in Massachusetts, based on investigations that took place years ago under then-Attorney General Maura Healey, is still not available to the public. Andrea Campbell, who’s been the state’s attorney general since January 2023, said Tuesday that it’s out of her hands when or whether to release the findings.
Appearing on Boston Public Radio, Campbell fielded questions around why the office she’s led since January 2023 has yet to make the document public. Survivors and advocates told New England Public Media last year that investigators from the state attorney general’s office interviewed them 2021 about abuse within the Worcester, Fall River and Springfield dioceses.
Campbell asked the public to be patient with her, but did not put a timeline on when the report might become available.
“I take sexual abuse allegations — you know, I’m a mom of two boys — very seriously, by whoever,” she said. “In this particular case, I inherited a report that was completed, sitting there. And now I’m doing what I can to see what we can do in terms of releasing it. But that being said, it’s not up to me personally.”
In 2003, Massachusetts’ then-Attorney General Thomas Reilly published a report investigating widespread sexual abuse of children within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston over the course of decades. Reilly wrote that the document would serve as an official public record and “confirm to all who may read it, now and in the future, that this tragedy was real.”
A staff member on Campbell’s team told a survivor earlier this year that the office was seeking a court’s approval to release the report involving the other dioceses, New England Public Media reported.
Campbell stuck close to that line on Tuesday, repeatedly saying the matter is “in the courts.” She said the report relies on multiple sources, including grand jury proceedings.
“You’ve got to be careful with a grand jury, which typically, of course, is secretive, and there’s a special way in which these proceedings happen,” Campbell said. “In order to then get it out in the public view, you have to get permission if all parties don’t agree to release it. It’s currently in the courts.”
Pressed by hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan, Campbell wouldn’t say if the three involved dioceses were the ones objecting to the report’s release.
“I don’t know if I can even say that,” she said.