Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said her office is still waiting for court approval to release the results of an investigation into child sexual abuse at the Fall River, Springfield and Worcester Catholic dioceses.

Campbell told GBH News on Tuesday that she “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.”

The investigation began when Gov. Maura Healey was attorney general, but its findings have never been made public.

Campbell, who took office in 2023, said court approval is needed because the investigation relies, in part, on grand jury proceedings.

“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,” she said on Boston Public Radio.

Campbell would not say who objected to its release.

“I can only share so much, but I ask the public to be patient,” she said.

Asked specifically if the dioceses objected to the report’s release, Campbell said she did not know “if I can even say that.”

“I’ll say this,” she said. “I will follow up based on what ... I can share. As of right now, all I can say is [it’s] in the courts.”

When the AG’s office interviewed survivors of abuse in 2021, Skip Shea described to investigators what happened to him. Starting at age 11, he survived abuse by more than three priests at the Worcester Diocese.

“It’s not easy waiting all this time,” said Shea, now 64 years old. “The legal system has let us down repeatedly. All we have had is patience with very, very little results.”

Shea said the AG’s office has contacted him only once about the investigation since he met with investigators in September 2021. He said Campbell’s office should provide “at least some sort of update” to people who testified.

Shea said a report from the state’s highest law enforcement official could help survivors heal — something he said happened when the Pennsylvania attorney general released a similar report in 2018.

“Victims became empowered. I hate the word victim, but they became empowered by having law enforcement stand with them and beside them and saying, 'Yup. This happened. And these are the people who committed those crimes,'” he said.

Terence McKiernan, the president of Bishop Accountability, and his colleague met with the AG’s office as part of the investigation in October 2021. He said he provided thousands of pages of documents about abuse by priests — and that “the report is a matter of public safety.”

“We’re really in the 'dog ate my homework territory’ about something that ought to be clear, obvious and necessary. Because the safety of children is at issue,” he said. “This is not something that really ought to be the subject of lame excuses.”

McKiernan pointed to a previous investigation into child sexual abuse at the Archdiocese of Boston, conducted by former Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly.

“In my judgment, when Tom Reilly did his his investigation and report back in 2003 of the Boston Archdiocese, he freely laid out that a grand jury had been involved,” McKiernan said. “There’s no reason in the world why we can’t have that information about this investigation, too.”
Copyright 2024 88.5 NEPM