Excerpts from Reilly's Report

Long Island (NY) Newsday
July 24, 2003

Excerpts from the Massachusetts attorney general's report:

As Archbishop, and therefore chief executive of the Archdiocese, Cardinal Law bears ultimate responsibility for the tragic treatment of children that occurred during his tenure. His responsibility for this tragedy is not, however, simply that of the person in charge. He had direct knowledge of the scope, duration and severity of the crisis experienced by children in the Archdiocese; he participated directly in crucial decisions concerning the assignment of abusive priests, decisions that typically increased the risk to children; and he knew or should have known that the policies, practices and procedures of the Archdiocese for addressing sexual misconduct were woefully inadequate given the magnitude of the problem.

Cardinal Law by no means bears sole responsibility for the harm done to children in the Archdiocese. With rare exception, none of the Cardinal's senior managers advised him to take any of the steps that might have ended the systemic abuse of children. ...

Bishop Thomas Daily

During his tenure as second-in-command to the Archbishop, Bishop Daily ... reported all information about sexual abuse investigations to Cardinal Medeiros, with whom he had a very close working relationship ... he had far less frequent meetings with Cardinal Law.

Bishop Daily's handling of allegations of clergy sexual abuse of children was deficient in several significant respects:

Bishop Daily failed to thoroughly investigate, or cause thorough investigations of, allegations of child sexual abuse, even in instances where there was evidence that the accused priest falsely denied the allegations.

Bishop Daily had a clear preference for keeping priests who sexually abused children in pastoral ministry and generally followed a practice of transferring those priests without supervision or notification to new parishes rather than removing them from pastoral ministry.

Bishop Daily apparently did not believe that a priest who engaged in such misconduct was apt to engage in such conduct in the future. Accordingly, he failed to take any meaningful steps to limit abusive priests' contact with children in the future.

As with all Archdiocese managers, Bishop Daily failed to report allegations of clergy sexual abuse to law enforcement.

Bishop William Murphy

During his eight-year tenure as second-in-command [to Cardinal Law], Bishop Murphy supervised the response to many sexual abuse cases. These included, among others, cases involving Fathers John Geoghan, Paul Mahan, Bernie Lane, Melvin Surrette, and George Berthold. He also participated in arranging for Father Surrette, already having been accused himself of sexually abusing children, to be Assistant Delegate responsible for arranging suitable job placements for priests found to have engaged in sexual abuse of children. Archdiocese documents show that Bishop Murphy was aware that there were proposals to place Surrette in other jobs, but that Bishop Murphy helped place him in the Delegate's Office instead. ...

During Bishop Murphy's tenure as Vicar for Administration, the Archdiocese took some positive steps in handling child sexual abuse cases, such as operating for one year a supervised residence for abusive priests. Nonetheless, with only one exception, Bishop Murphy did not report to law enforcement any of the numerous allegations of clergy sexual abuse he reviewed nor did he ever advise the Cardinal to do so ...

[Photo caption: Former priest John Geoghan in 2001. AP Photo.]