Judge orders most Catholic Church names made public in Maryland AG report, calls for ‘more transparency, not less’

BALTIMORE — A Baltimore judge has ordered the release of most of the redacted names in the attorney general’s report on the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s history of child sexual abuse, according to court records unsealed Tuesday.

The order allows for the release Sept. 26 of 43 of 46 blacked-out names, including those of five high-ranking church officials who contributed to the cover-up, and nine of 10 alleged abusers. The people to be named will have an opportunity to appeal the order before the attorney general’s office would publish a version of the report with far fewer redactions than its initial version, which came out in April.

It’s not clear if any appeals would take place in open court; the hearings thus far have been behind closed doors. Records of previous hearings and filings in the matter will remain sealed, the judge ruled.

“The court’s order enables my office to continue to lift the veil of secrecy over decades of horrifying abuse suffered by the survivors,” Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a news release.

The Baltimore Sun identified the five officials, who include the bishop of the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, W. Francis Malooly, in a May 4 article. When The Sun revealed the names of those clerics, one resigned from a hospital board and the archdiocese canceled the transfer of another, the Rev. J. Bruce Jarboe, to a prominent parish in Towson after backlash from parishioners and families with children at its parochial school. Jarboe and the former University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center board member, Monsignor Richard ‘Rick’ Woy, remain in active ministry.

In his opinion explaining his decision to release names, Circuit Judge Robert Taylor wrote that the officials argued the report mischaracterized their actions and insinuated sinister motives when they were blameless, or at least justified, in their actions. Taylor wrote that the five officials are free to make those claims in a public manner, but “this is an argument for more transparency, not less.”

“To continue to hide their identities does not advance that interest in public discourse; just the opposite,” he wrote. “It allows the most negative possible inferences to be drawn, while continuing to shroud this troubling history in secrecy.”

The Sun also either originally identified or confirmed the names of the 10 alleged abusers in subsequent articles, including a sitting Episcopal priest, the Rev. Thomas Hudson, and Frank Cimino Jr., the founder and president of the Maryland State Boychoir. Hudson was placed on indefinite leave after The Sun determined his identity and contacted the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. Cimino resigned from the choir shortly after the newspaper named him.

Taylor wrote in his opinion that Cimino, identified in the report as abuser No. 147, told the court the accusations against him were investigated, referred to city prosecutors in 1987 and he was not charged. Cimino denies the allegations as “hearsay” and says they are defamatory, according to Taylor’s opinion. Cimino did not return a message Tuesday seeking comment.

Brown said the report is not a criminal indictment and does not constitute a legal finding of guilt for anyone named in it.

Taylor determined that the name of former Rev. Joseph F. O’Brien, No. 154 on the report’s “List of Abusers,” would remain redacted for the time being because the attorney general’s office was unable to notify him about his inclusion in the report. That meant he was not afforded an opportunity to participate in a July hearing to argue against his name being made public.

The Sun identified O’Brien in May and located him in Newport News, Virginia. He told a reporter for the Daily Press, one of the Sun’s sister papers, that he could not have committed the abuse because the girl who accused him of unwanted kissing and fondling “didn’t wear dresses” and “was gay.”

The other unredacted names are lesser players in the larger, systemic cover-up of abuse — Taylor described them in his opinion as having “played relatively minor roles” — and have largely avoided public scrutiny thus far.

The attorney general’s 463-page report describes how 156 clergy, teachers and other church staff abused at least 600 children and young adults throughout the 20th century. It also lays bare the lengths the Catholic Church went to hide the abuse. Clerics and church attorneys leaned on judges, prosecutors and police, using their political influence and positions in the community to keep cases out of the courts. Victims were silenced or lied to, and oftentimes an abusive priest was sent to a new parish after an allegation was made.

In some ways, the redactions in the attorney general’s report mirrored those cover-up efforts, said abuse survivors Jean Wehner and Teresa Lancaster. They filed a motion to participate in the court process surrounding the report’s initial release and pushed for an unredacted version to be made public.

“The redactions are just another way of saying, ‘We are hiding this from you,’” Wehner said Tuesday. “I don’t even know how they can face themselves in a mirror and say, ‘This makes perfect sense and we’re just going to black it out and they won’t notice.’”

Echoing Wehner, Lancaster added that she believes the only reason the names are set to become public is because of pressure from survivors.

“If you don’t make [the church] do something, then they won’t do it,” Lancaster said.

Both women expressed content with the judge’s decision, and their attorney, Kurt Wolfgang, said the ruling represents the idea that government is no longer ensnared in the grasp of the Catholic Church.

In a statement, Archdiocese of Baltimore officials asked the public to join them in prayer for all abuse victims and anyone else affected by “the scourge of child sexual abuse.”

“The Archdiocese has not opposed the release of the Attorney General’s report, just as it has continued its long-standing policy of making public credible allegations of child sexual abuse involving its personnel,” church spokesman Christian Kendzierski wrote in an email to The Sun. “We are committed to continuing all of our efforts to keep safe the children in our care, and we recognize that the Attorney General’s report is a reminder of a sad and deeply painful history tied to the tremendous harm caused to innocent children and young people by some ministers of the Church.”

While the archdiocese committed to a public release of the report in November after the attorney general’s office finished its four-year investigation, it also paid the legal fees of a group of its employees and clerics that sought to challenge their inclusion in the report on the basis that they didn’t commit abuse, so their names should not be public. The members of that group remain anonymous.

The report was based largely on the church’s records, which the attorney general’s investigators obtained through a grand jury subpoena. Because grand jury proceedings are secret under Maryland law, attorneys representing the anonymous group sought to have proceedings about the report placed under seal and a judge who initially oversaw the case issued a gag order. The attorneys representing that initial group, William J. Murphy and former Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein, declined Tuesday to comment.

In his opinion, Taylor avoided prescribing any wrongdoing to the archdiocese itself, writing instead that the litany of abuses and their subsequent cover-up were the actions of individuals, and the church began handling reports of child sexual abuse differently in the 21st century.

“These names are being released because the key to understanding the report is understanding that this did not happen because of anything “the Archdiocese” did or did not do. It happened because of the choices made by specific individuals at specific times,” Taylor wrote.

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