Nearly 1,000 children were abused at three Massachusetts dioceses, state probe finds

According to a state probe conducted by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, nearly 1,000 children were sexually abused by more than 270 Catholic clerics across three dioceses in the state over a span of decades. The investigation, released on Wednesday, marked the first comprehensive public accounting of the abuse and institutional failures that allowed it to persist for more than half a century at the dioceses of Fall River, Springfield, and Worcester.

Most of the documented abuse took place before 2002, the year when the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning report brought international attention to the clergy sex abuse scandal, revealing how officials at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston had routinely covered up instances of sexual abuse by priests. The state attorney general's investigation uncovered similar patterns of abuse and institutional negligence in the other Massachusetts dioceses, highlighting a pattern of prioritizing the church's reputation over the protection of children.