BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe
October 20, 2024
By Brian MacQuarrie
George Shea of Uxbridge, who was sexually abused as a boy by Roman Catholic priests, sat down for hours in 2021 with investigators from then-attorney general Maura Healey’s office to detail what had happened to him at the hands of clergy he had trusted.
Shea, 64, said he was told that Healey was conducting a wide-ranging investigation into clergy sexual abuse in the Worcester diocese. Shea had become an outspoken advocate for survivors of such abuse, and he was heartened that the state was looking beyond the well-publicized scandals that had rocked the Archdiocese of Boston.
Three years later, Shea and other survivors from the Worcester, Fall River, and Springfield dioceses are still waiting for the results of that investigation to be made public.
“It’s frustrating,” said Shea, who recalled that he sat for a lengthy interview with the attorney general’s office, which included a state trooper, in September 2021. “But it seems to be that that’s how it goes with survivors of clergy abuse. We always have to wait.”
Attorney General Andrea Campbell, who succeeded now-Governor Healey as the state’s top law-enforcement officer in January 2023, said in a radio interview last week that court approval is needed to release the report, which was compiled through multiple sources, including grand jury proceedings.
“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,” Campbell said last week on Boston Public Radio.
“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 added. “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.”
Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a Waltham-based archive on the clergy sexual abuse crisis, said he sat with investigators from the attorney general’s office in October 2021 and provided them with nearly 1,500 pages of documents, much of which concerned a Whitinsville treatment center for priests where Shea was abused as a teenager.
“I can only say that I’m puzzled,” McKiernan said. “For years now, there seems that there has been no urgency to get this report out there, despite the fact that survivors took the difficult step to discuss the terrible things that have been done to them.
“We had a lot to do with the investigation as it was ongoing, and we were looking forward to the report. We are quite disappointed,” said McKiernan, who called for its release with other picketers outside Campbell’s officein July 2023. “We have reached out to them and have received no response at all.”
McKiernan said the delay stands in sharp contrast to the public release in 2003 of a report by then-attorney general Thomas Reilly into allegations of widespread abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston.
“He was very open that a grand jury was involved,” McKiernan said of Reilly.
Shea, the abuse survivor from Uxbridge, said he received an update from the state in April.
“I am reaching out to let you know that the Attorney General’s Office is still in the process of seeking court approval to release the diocese report,” division chief Anne Kelley McCarthy wrote in an email, which Shea shared with the Globe.
“I realize that you have been waiting quite some time and this lengthy process is extremely frustrating!” McCarthy wrote. “I want you to know that we will notify you and other survivors involved as soon as we receive the court’s approval for release.”
The attorney general’s office, the Diocese of Worcester, and the Diocese of Fall River declined to comment when approached by the Globe. The Diocese of Springfield did not reply.
“The Diocese of Worcester has no comment on any report by the attorney general. It is the diocese’s policy to fully cooperate with law enforcement, including the Attorney General’s Office,” said Raymond Delisle, diocesan chancellor and spokesperson.
The delay in releasing the report could be complicated by several factors, said R. Michael Cassidy, a Boston College Law School professor who serves on the state Board of Bar Overseers.
Under state law, conversations between law enforcement and victims of sexual abuse are subject to confidentiality restrictions to protect the identity of victims, Cassidy said. Campbell would be bound further by the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, if some were to be included in the findings.
A judge, however, could find that the public interest in the report “outweighs any right to privacy,” Cassidy said. Names and other grand jury information could be redacted if deemed necessary.
“The public certainly has an interest in knowing what happened in these dioceses; the public certainly has an interest in knowing if there are priests on active duty; and the victims have an interest,” said Cassidy, who served as chief of the criminal bureau under former attorney general Scott Harshbarger. “The public interest in the need for this report is high.”
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com.