State's Top Lawyer Accuses Boston Church of Cover-Up

By Pam Belluck
New York Times
December 13, 2002

Boston, December 12 -- The state attorney general today harshly criticized the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, saying church officials had engaged in a cover-up of sex crimes by priests who abused children.

In a news conference here, the attorney general, Thomas F. Reilly, said church officials had developed an "elaborate scheme" to keep sexual abuse by priests away from the attention of law enforcement officials.

For months, Mr. Reilly and a grand jury have been investigating whether archdiocesan officials can be held criminally liable in the mishandling of the cases of abusive priests.

Today a person with knowledge of the investigation said the grand jury had issued subpoenas to Cardinal Bernard F. Law and seven bishops who worked for him. The subpoenas, first reported today by The Boston Globe, were issued last Friday.

Those subpoenaed include five men who are now bishops of their own dioceses: Bishop Thomas V. Daily of Brooklyn, Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre, Bishop Alfred C. Hughes of New Orleans, Bishop Robert J. Banks of Green Bay, Wis., and Bishop John B. McCormack of Manchester, N.H.

In his news conference today, Mr. Reilly acknowledged that Massachusetts law made it hard to prosecute church officials for such actions.

Prosecutors in Massachusetts face more legal obstacles than do prosecutors in New Hampshire, where on Tuesday Bishop McCormack signed an agreement with the state attorney general acknowledging that the diocese had failed to protect children and that it probably would have been convicted of criminal charges.

But in Massachusetts, some of the most relevant laws, relating to conspiracy or to being an accessory to a crime, would require prosecutors to prove that archdiocesan officials intended to commit wrongdoing, not just that they were grossly negligent.

Still, Mr. Reilly forcefully criticized the archdiocese today and indicated that his office was seeking every legal avenue that might allow for archdiocesan officials to be prosecuted.

"There was an elaborate scheme to keep it away from law enforcement and to keep it quiet," Mr. Reilly said. "The leadership -- and this is a leadership problem, a management problem -- felt it was more important to protect the church than children. And as a result of that, countless numbers of children were harmed."

"It certainly is a cover-up," he added. "At the very least you would expect a different approach from a religious institution, and that's not the case here."

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

Mr. Reilly said that despite an agreement by the archdiocese in the spring to provide prosecutors with records and information about how abuse accusations had been handled, investigators had not received everything they had asked for.

Kurt Schwartz, chief of the attorney general's criminal bureau, suggested that there might be other legal vehicles for prosecuting church officials.

He mentioned laws that say that "a corporate entity can be held criminally responsible for the conduct of its employees" and those that say that managers or supervisors might be "responsible as accessories, particularly accessories after the fact, for certain crimes that are committed by those under their supervision."

Mr. Reilly, who is Catholic, spoke more angrily about the archdiocese than he had in the past. He said he was concerned that the archdiocese had not yet implemented recommendations for changes in the church's sexual abuse policy from a commission appointed by Cardinal Law.

But most of Mr. Reilly's criticism was aimed at the way the archdiocese had handled accusations of abuse.

"We felt an obligation to go forward, particularly given our experience dealing with this institution," Mr. Reilly said. "We've had experience dealing with other institutions against which allegations, serious allegations, had been made.

"Our experience in the past is generally they do the right thing when it comes to children. And by doing the right thing I mean they clean house. And they cooperate and they try to work with us to get to the bottom of this and find out the truth. Obviously that has not happened here."