Still, the complaints against Porter, even at that time, were either too serious or too numerous to be entirely ignored. Church officials responding to the accusations shuffled Porter from parish to parish in an effort to convince his victims that something had been done. Those officials included then-monsignor Medeiros, who would later approve similar reassignments for Father Geoghan after Medeiros had been installed as archbishop of Boston. Even Vatican officials under Pope Paul VI knew of Porter's obsessive sexual compulsion for children. In 1973, when Porter opted to leave the priesthood, he was remarkably candid about his condition when submitting his resignation papers. “I know in the past I used to hide behind a Roman collar, thinking that it would be a shield for me,” he wrote. “Now there is no shield. I know that if I become familiar with children, people would immediately become suspicious…. In the lay life, I find out of necessity that I must cope with the problem or suffer the consequences.” But the document was hidden away in Vatican files. And Porter's victims would keep their dark secret until 1992, when Frank Fitzpatrick, a victim who was also a private detective, located Porter in Minnesota and began the process of having criminal charges filed.
When news stories about Porter began appearing, Cardinal Law's first response was to declare the retired priest an “aberration, ” insisting that priests who sexually abused minors were the “rare exception.” To victims he also appeared to evince an excess of sympathy for abusive priests. At a Mass for priests celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary with the Boston archdiocese, Law said, “We would be less than the community of faith and love which we are called to be, however, were we not to attempt to respond both to victim and betrayer in truth, in love, and in reconciliation.”
Behind the scenes, Law was hearing plenty of evidence, if he needed any, that Porter was anything but an aberration. As with the earlier publicized cases of clergy sexual abuse in Louisiana and Minnesota, news accounts of Porter's crimes were encouraging victims to step forward with further tales of sexual abuse committed by still more priests — and many of those victims were stepping forward in the Boston archdiocese.
Among them were Raymond Sinibaldi and Robert Anderton. Sinibaldi and Anderton were cousins who had grown up in Weymouth, south of Boston, where they were molested in the early 1960s by Rev. Ernest E. Tourigney, when Tourigney was a recently ordained priest at Immaculate Conception Church — the same church that would offer Law the enthusiastic welcome in 1984.
Like so many other victims of clergy sexual abuse, Sinibaldi and Anderton had for decades kept their stories secret. But after the Porter story broke, they realized Tourigney was still working, as copastor of a church in Revere, north of Boston, where he was spiritual director of its elementary and middle school. Worried that he might still be molesting children, they decided to confront the priest and report him to Law.
At their meeting with Tourigney in the parking lot of an area hotel, Sinibaldi nearly lost his temper. “I believe you are worse than a purveyor of child pornography,” he said, sneering. Concerned that he might attack Tourigney, Sinibaldi had written down the remainder of what he wanted to say: “A person who would wrap themselves in God and weave themselves into the very fabric of a family who came to know, love and trust him for the purpose of molesting their children is the incarnation of evil.”
When they visited the chancery of the Boston archdiocese a few days later, Sinibaldi and Anderton had their tempers in check. But they also made it clear to Rev. John B. McCormack, then Law's top deputy for handling allegations of clergy sexual abuse, that they would tell their story to a television reporter if Law would not listen to them. Within days Sinibaldi and Anderton were seated at the long, deeply burnished mahogany table in the conference room of Law's residence, recounting the years of abuse they had suffered at the hands of Tourigney when they were between thirteen and sixteen years of age. Law appeared to listen attentively, but Sinibaldi and Anderton wanted more than a sympathetic ear. They wanted Law to remove Tourigney from his ministry and formulate an aggressive policy for ridding the archdiocese of all priests who had been credibly accused of molesting children.
Law did pull Tourigney from active ministry, and in the wake of the Porter case had already been moving quietly to put in place a policy for handling claims of clergy sexual abuse. As work on a first draft moved forward, two critical questions emerged: Should accused priests who receive treatment for their sexual disorders be allowed to return to parishes in the archdiocese, and should Church officials be required to report allegations of clergy sexual misconduct to state authorities?
Sinibaldi, who had worked with sex offenders at Bridgewater Stale Hospital, a facility for the criminally insane, wrote Law to recommend that Church officials report all allegations of sexual misconduct by priests. “The crime of sexual abuse of a minor is one of such heinous proportion that to withhold information about a known perpetrator is in and of itself criminal,” Sinibaldi wrote. But when Law unveiled his new policy, in January 1993, Sinibaldi and Anderton were sorely disappointed. Although Law said that the archdiocese would offer to pay for counseling for the victims and that he would appoint a review board with lay members to examine allegations of clergy sexual abuse, he also said that in some cases he might permit priests who had been treated for sexual disorders to return to parish work. And he reserved for the archdiocese the primary responsibility for hearing and investigating all complaints of clergy sexual misconduct.
Under Massachusetts law, individuals working in two dozen professions, including physicians, social workers, and teachers, were required to report allegations of sexual misconduct with minors to the state's Department of Social Services, which could in turn refer the allegations to law enforcement authorities. In releasing his new policy, Law pledged that Church officials would report allegations of sexual misconduct in accordance with state law. But priests were not among those covered by the statute, and the Church had successfully fought off legislation to add clergy to the list of so-called mandated reporters. So it was largely a meaningless promise.
Feeling that the Church had once again betrayed them, Sinibaldi and Anderton hired Boston attorney MacLeish to file suit against the archdiocese and Tourigney. In 1995 each of the men received a settlement of $35,000. But Sinibaldi came to regret the outcome. “In the end they used us,” he said. “They wanted to say they had worked with victims on the new policy, and they did say that. The problem is, they didn't hear anything we said.” The other problem was that Sinibaldi and Anderton, like scores of victims who went to the archdiocese, signed confidentiality agreements — or gag orders — as a condition of receiving their settlement payments. In fact virtually all those who went to the Church with claims of sexual misconduct by priests received settlements before they filed suit, an arrangement that left no public record of the crime committed by the abusing priests. And the confidentiality agreements signed by the victims said the Church could get back its settlement payments if details of the abuse were ever divulged— further protection for abusive priests.
In short, the process led to an unholy alliance among Church officials, victims, and the attorneys. As a result, the archdiocese was able to conceal the crimes committed by its priests. Indeed, in his deposition in the Geoghan case, Bishop Daily said it was the policy of the archdiocese to avoid scandal where possible. Meanwhile, victims were spared embarrassment, while their attorneys collected their fees — generally a third of the settlement awards. Some lawyers called the payments “hush money”; others said they were a legitimate means of compensating victims while preserving their anonymity. But the process also helped to perpetuate the abuse. “Obviously, confidentiality agreements arc good for the perpetrator and his or her enablers, since the secrecy allows for further wrongful acts to continue,” said Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney who represented more than one hundred of Father Geoghan's victims.
To be sure, earlier Garabedian clients had settled in secret. But by late 2001, Garabedian had spent five years interviewing alleged victims of John Geoghan's sexual abuse, filing lawsuits, requesting Church records through the legal discovery process, and deposing Church officials under oath. Through it all, he compiled a body of evidence showing that cardinals, bishops, and other Church officials had been covering up for Geoghan for more than three decades. These documents were among those released at the request of the
Globe
by Judge Constance Sweeney in January of 2002, and they were at the heart of the lawsuits that were the flash point for the scandal that would engulf the Catholic Church.
Garabedian and his associate, William H. Gordon, had taken a novel approach when filing what would ultimately total eighty-four lawsuits on behalf of eighty-six plaintiffs. Other attorneys bringing clergy sexual abuse lawsuits had sued the Archdiocese of Boston. But like all nonprofit organizations in the state, the archdiocese is protected by a doctrine of charitable immunity that limits its liability to $20,000. Because of that cap, attorneys with sexual misconduct claims had often settled with the archdiocese for modest sums without even going to court, or shortly after filing suit.
But instead of suing the archdiocese, Garabedian sued Cardinal Law, five of Law's bishops, and several other Church officials, claiming that all of them knew of Geoghan's sexual misconduct and were therefore responsible for it. Garabedian even filed notice to depose Law.
The strategy paid off — at least initially. In March of 2002, after the
Globe
stories on Geoghan had appeared and before Law's scheduled deposition, Garabedian and attorneys for the archdiocese reached a settlement agreement hammered together by mediator Paul A. Finn. Under the agreement, the eighty-four lawsuits would be settled for between $15 million and $30 million, with the final amount to be determined by Finn and his associates, who would evaluate each claim and award an individual settlement to each plaintiff.
But the avalanche of disclosures about Geoghan and other priests that had begun in January produced a wave of new alleged victims — and potentially enormous liability for the archdiocese. At least five hundred people claiming they'd been sexually abused by priests retained lawyers in the first four months of 2002. And in May, with donations to the Church falling off rapidly, the archdiocese reneged on the deal — stunning victims and many faithful Catholics.
That the Geoghan revelations would produce a torrent of new claims should have come as no surprise to the Church. In the years immediately following the Porter case, there had been many new complaints. In fact, during the ten years after Porter's victims started coming forward, the Church quietly settled child molestation claims against at least seventy priests in the Boston archdiocese, with MacLeish representing many of the victims. In some cases, he said, Church officials eager to dispense with complaints quickly and quietly would refer the victims to him.
MacLeish also said later that he eventually grew to despise the settlements, because he knew that the confidentiality agreements that went with them helped keep clergy sexual abuse hidden. “It sickened me to see so many of these cases going by unnoticed,” he said. And so after a year of urging clients to sign the agreements, MacLeish says, he told a reporter that his clients had made sexual abuse allegations against several priests who remained in active ministry. Still, Philip Saviano, a victim of clergy sexual abuse who hired MacLeish to represent him, criticized MacLeish and other lawyers for being too eager to have their clients settle their claims. Only through filing lawsuits, Saviano said, arc victims likely to obtain Church records shedding light on precisely who had responsibility for the priests who abused them. Saviano, for instance, filed suit against the Worcester, Massachusetts, diocese in the early 1990s, claiming he was abused by Father Holley, the priest sentenced to prison in New Mexico, and received Church documents showing that six bishops in three states knew about Holley's record of abuse. Saviano also refused to sign a confidentiality agreement, although he might have paid a price for that decision. When Saviano settled, he received only $12,500 from the Worcester diocese, whereas two other victims who claimed abuse by Holley and agreed to stay silent each received more.
One of the most notable public statements issued to help the Boston archdiocese evade its responsibility for Geoghan was made by Law's attorney, Wilson D. Rogers Jr., in a July 2001 edition of
The Pilot.
“Each assignment of John Geoghan, subsequent to the first complaint of sexual misconduct, was incident to an independent medical evaluation advising that such assignment was appropriate and safe,” Rogers wrote.
The cardinal echoed that statement in January 2002, when he attempted to contain the Geoghan scandal by apologizing for having reassigned the pedophile priest to parish work even though he knew Geoghan was a repeat child molester. In an extraordinary mea culpa, Law said it was “tragically incorrect” for him to have assigned Geoghan to St. Julia's parish in 1984. Yet he also seemed to be excusing his actions when he echoed Rogers's earlier statement in
The Pilot
and claimed his decision was based on “psychiatric assessments and medical opinions that such assignments were safe and reasonable.”
At first glance the statements made by Law and his attorney appear to be supported by Church documents. For example, the documents show that in 1980, after Geoghan had casually admitted to a Boston pastor that he had sexually molested Maryetta Dussourd's seven sons and nephews, Church officials sent him to Dr. Robert W. Mullins for psychotherapy and to Dr. John H. Brennan for psychoanalysis. The records also show that in 1981, after Geoghan had admitted to molesting the Dussourd boys and had been removed from St. Andrew's parish, in Boston's Jamaica Plain section, Brennan wrote to Bishop Daily to say he had met with Geoghan and that “it was mutually agreed that he was now able to resume priestly duties.” In 1984, after Geoghan had been transferred to St. Brendan's parish in Dorchester, where he had molested still more children, Church officials once again sent him to Mullins and Brennan. Mullins, in a written evaluation, described Geoghan as “a longtime friend and patient” who had been removed from his parish due to “a rather unfortunate traumatic experience.” And he recommended that Geoghan be allowed to return to “full pastoral activities without any need for specific restriction.” Brennan, for his part, met with Geoghan again and, despite the priest's recidivism, gave him yet another favorable review. “No psychiatric contraindications or restrictions to his work,” he wrote.