Sexual abuse in Baltimore’s Catholic Church: At least 600 children fell victim during 60-year cover-up, Maryland AG reports

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown released a report Wednesday, detailing a six-decade-long coverup by Baltimore’s Catholic Church, which involved the sexual abuse of at least 600 children.

The real number of the victims is “likely far higher,” Brown claimed.

The 463-page report highlights individual priests and specific accounts of their alleged crimes. It marks the culmination of a four-year investigation comprised of hundreds of thousands of documents and untold stories from hundreds of survivors.

Brown described the findings as evidence of a “depraved, systemic failure” in the church. “Time and again, the archdiocese chose to safeguard the institution and avoid scandal instead of protecting the children in its care,” he said in a statement.

Baltimore Archbishop William Lori did not deny the accusations, but called the report a “sad and painful reminder of the tremendous harm caused to innocent children and young people by some ministers of the church,” NBC News reported.

“The detailed accounts of abuse are shocking and soul-searing,” Lori added.

The Baltimore Sun summarized several of the egregious accounts from the report, which often involved the church being aware of abuse occurring and doing little to combat it.

One instance involved Father Lawrence Brett admitting to abuse in Connecticut in 1964, and then being sent by church officials to treatment in New Mexico, where he continued to abuse boys. He was subsequently transferred to a high school in Baltimore, where he abused at least 20 more, the report says.

Another case from 1987 showed Father Robert Newman admitting to abusing 12 boys over a 15-year period. However, the head of the sex crimes unit for the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office chose not to prosecute him.

Newman was also sent to a treatment center before being relocated to the Archdiocese of Hartford, Conn. He served there as a priest until 2002 when his abuse was finally made public.

Less than an hour after the full report was released Wednesday afternoon, the Maryland General Assembly passed the Child Victims Act, a bill that will allow more survivors to sue those who sexually abused them. The bill was sent to the desk of Gov. Wes Moore, who said he was “eager” to sign it into law.