WORCESTER (MA)
New England Public Media [Springfield MA]
February 5, 2025
By Nancy Eve Cohen
[Photo above: A photograph of Phil Saviano in the room where he met with investigators from the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, when he was in hospice in 2021. The office was investigating child sexual abuse at the Worcester Diocese, where Saviano had been abused. The results of the investigation have not been made public. Nancy Eve Cohen / NEPM]
This is part two of a series. Read part one here. [Both articles have links to the somewhat different audio of the reports as originally broadcast on Morning Edition, including the interviews with survivors.]
It’s been about five years years since the Massachusetts attorney general’s office launched an investigation into child sexual abuse by priests at three Catholic dioceses in the state.
Back then, Gov. Maura Healey was the attorney general. The state’s current top prosecutor, Andrea Campbell, said her office is still seeking court approval to release the results of the investigation.
“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,” Campbell said on GBH Radio.
But survivors and advocates aren’t waiting. They’re revealing what they know about the attorney general’s inquiry.
The investigation started as early as 2019 and continued at least until November 2021. Early that month, Assistant Attorney General Helle Sachse interviewed Phil Saviano. Matthew Stone, a state trooper, was also at the meeting.
Saviano was a survivor of child sexual abuse at the Worcester Diocese and an outspoken advocate for justice for those who were abused by priests. At the time of the meeting, he was in hospice at his brother’s house, dying of cancer.
Brooks Egerton was also there. A former investigative reporter at The Dallas Morning News, Egerton is writing a biography of Phil Saviano. On Saviano’s request, he sat in on the meeting.
Although Saviano’s voice was weak, he answered the assistant attorney general’s questions and asked some of his own, Egerton recalled.
“Phil asked[Sachse] if the dioceses knew about this investigation,” Egerton said. “She said that they did — that they had received grand jury subpoenas and that the investigators had spoken with both … diocesan attorneys and diocesan managers.”
According to Egerton, Sachse said, “The dioceses had responded by producing records to the attorney general.”
She told Saviano one reason they wanted to talk with him is because he had so many records from the Worcester Diocese from an earlier lawsuit.
“She said … that’s a reason for talking to Phil, because she had no way to know whether what the diocese produced to the AG was complete,” Egerton said.
Sachse told Saviano the attorney general’s office was not planning to publish a large church-by-church breakdown of individual cases and predators, as has been done in some other cities and states, according to Egerton.
“They were not trying to go back over great numbers of individual cases in painstaking detail. The focus was going to be on institutional response to clergy sexual abuse allegations, making recommendations on how to prevent this disaster from ever happening again — ‘disaster’ being my word,” he said.
The assistant attorney general told Saviano the investigation might also recommend changes to the law to help survivors seeking justice.
But some survivors of abuse who answered investigators’ questions want the attorney general’s office also to name credibly accused priests — to help victims heal. David O’Regan, 74, was interviewed by investigators at their office in Boston in 2021.
“If they do have anything of substance, if they can print the names of the abusers that have been shielded by the church … that would be a tremendous benefit to somebody suffering in silence,” O’Regan said.
That’s something many dioceses, including Springfield and Fall River, have done, but not the Worcester Diocese.
O’Regan is a survivor and led support groups in Worcester and in Boston for those abused by priests.
He said his own healing started 40 years after he was abused when the Boston Globe published articles on the coverup of sexual abuse by priests. That public reckoning helped him a lot, but it wasn’t easy at first.
“It sent me in a downward spiral into deep depression. But from the bottom, I was able to work my way up, get the help that I needed, process the harm that was done to me, and find joy and happiness in my life again,” O’Regan said.
Skip Shea also met with investigators and a state trooper, on September 29, 2021.
Shea said he was abused by priests from the Worcester Diocese starting when he was 11. Since his meeting with investigators, he has sent emails, a hand-written letter and picketed in front of the attorney general’s office asking for the results of the investigation to be released.
“So other victims can then probably see this and then come forward and get the justice they deserve,” Shea said.
But it may be an unconventional justice, said Terence McKiernan of Bishop Accountability, which tracks investigations like the one started in Massachusetts. He and the organization’s co-director, Anne Barrett Doyle, also met with investigators on October 25, 2021.
McKiernan said it can take decades before a victim comes forward after being abused as a child. By then, the statute of limitations, which might allow prosecution — has often run out.
“In lieu of prosecution, you at least have the thorough criminal investigation that’s done by an AG’s team, expressed in a report, even if the person who did the crime can’t be prosecuted,” McKiernan said.
McKiernan said often reports on inquiries like this one, into child sexual abuse at dioceses, contain — from a legal perspective — allegations.
“They do not have the standing in law of an indictment, a prosecution and a conviction. But because the investigations are done by professionals and are done carefully, the reports have a kind of authority that is important to survivors and also important to the community as a whole,” he said.
But this report has not come out.
Phil Saviano, who spoke with investigators in 2021, died just a few weeks later.
Sitting in the sun-filled room where his late brother met with investigators, Phil Saviano’s brother, Jim, said Phil would be disappointed the investigation is still not public.
“Were Phil here today, he would probably be very active in pounding on the door of the attorney general for the last three years, trying to get that thing loose,” Jim Saviano said.
In an email to survivor Skip Shea, dated April 16, 2024, the attorney general’s office wrote that “it’s still in the process of seeking court approval to release the Diocese report.” That was sent more than nine months ago.
The attorney general’s office recently emailed NEPM it is “bound to rules of law that do not allow us to publicly comment on our efforts to release the report.”
The Fall River, Springfield and Worcester dioceses did not respond to multiple requests for comment.