BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun [Baltimore MD]
February 24, 2023
By Lee O. Sanderlin
A Baltimore judge has ordered the public release of a heavily redacted version of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office report detailing the history of child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Circuit Judge Robert Taylor issued his written ruling Friday, directing the attorney general’s office to redact 208 names from the report so it can be released sometime in March.
“Keeping this report from the public is an injustice,” Taylor wrote.
Former Attorney General Brian Frosh’s office finished its report in mid-November, and asked the court’s permission to make public its investigative findings on how 158 priests and other church employees sexually abused and tortured at least 600 people, with examples of abuse going back at least eight decades. The report also shows how the church, in that time period, sought to cover up the abuses and, in some cases, enabled them.
The names to be redacted are those of people who have not been previously identified publicly, Taylor wrote, and are either accused of abusing children, covering up that abuse, silencing victims, or otherwise helping to cover up and enable abuse. Those 208 people are entitled to be notified they are in the report, and will be given a chance to review the portion of the report that addresses their involvement.
Current Attorney General Anthony Brown released a statement saying his office is pleased with Taylor’s decision.
“The office will move expeditiously to comply with the court’s order and prepare a redacted copy of the report to be released upon review and approval by the court,” the Democrat said. The office has until March 13 to provide the proposed redactions to Taylor for review.
A more complete version of the report, with fewer redactions, may be released in the future, the judge wrote.
Archbishop William E. Lori has said multiple times neither he nor the church oppose the report’s release. The archdiocese did not immediately return a request for comment.
Taylor wrote that the report details how certain clergy went to “extraordinary lengths to protect abusers, bury accusations, and essentially enable the rape and torture of children and young adults for many years.”
“The only form of justice that may now be available is a public reckoning — a disclosure of the facts as found by the [office of the attorney general] and contained in its report.”
The attorney general’s office said in court it does not expect any future indictments as a result of its four-year investigation.
Taylor presided over a secret hearing Feb. 14, with lawyers representing the attorney general’s office, the archdiocese, an anonymous group of 16 people named in the report, a groups of abuse survivors, and a group of victim advocates. As part of Taylor’s ruling, he determined that the advocates were not party to the proceedings, and could no longer continue to participate.
Attorneys for the anonymous group of 16 declined to comment on Taylor’s ruling. That group asked Taylor to require the attorney general’s office to notify those who whose names are to be redacted in the initial release; some of those 208 people have died.
The church is paying, at least in part, the legal fees for that anonymous group. Lori said previously the church “pledged to support the rights” of people named in the report but who are not accused of abuse and who were not given the opportunity to respond to the attorney general’s investigation.
David Lorenz, president of the Maryland chapter of the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, was removed from the proceedings, along with SNAP as a whole. While Lorenz hopes an unredacted report is released at some point, he said Taylor’s order was a victory for transparency.
“People will see what the church has done to the children of Maryland,” Lorenz told The Baltimore Sun.
None of the people involved in the legal proceedings were able to speak publicly about them, or the report, after Circuit Judge Anthony Vittoria issued a confidentiality order in the case Dec. 8. Vittoria oversaw the proceedings as part of his duties on the grand jury docket. He was transferred from that docket and replaced by Taylor at the beginning of the year, a move that was scheduled months in advance.
he report and the litigation around it are secret because the 456-page document relies heavily on information obtained by way of a grand jury. Maryland law requires grand jury records be kept secret, and the attorney general’s motion in November asked the court to waive that secrecy.
The coming release of a redacted report figures to play prominently into state lawmakers’ debates about whether to pass the Child Victims Act — legislation making it possible for more survivors to sue their abusers and the institutions that enabled them. Maryland law does not allow for childhood sexual abuse survivors to file lawsuits after their 38th birthdays.
Part of Taylor’s rationale in making a version of the report public is to help the General Assembly make a more sound decision when considering the bill.
“Any further delay in its release would prevent the General Assembly from considering this 469-page trove of information about this topic,” Taylor wrote.
Supplemented with interviews, the report relies on more than 100,000 internal church documents that the attorney general’s office obtained via a grand jury subpoena.