How former Mass. AG disclosed inquiry on child sexual abuse, despite grand jury secrecy rule

A Massachusetts Attorney General’s grand jury investigation into child sexual abuse at three Catholic dioceses in the state has never been made public. The findings of a similar investigation, 23 years-ago, were shared, legally, with the public.

On July 14, 2003 Thomas F. Reilly, the Massachusetts attorney general at the time, published a report on his investigation into crimes against children at the Archdiocese of Boston.

When Gov. Maura Healey was attorney general she launched a similar inquiry. But she looked into the dioceses of Worcester, Springfield and Fall River.

Survivors of abuse, who answered investigators’ questions in the fall of 2021, have been calling on Attorney General Andrea Campbell to release a report on the inquiry started by Healey.

But because it was a grand jury investigation, there’s a legal hold up as Campbell explained on GBH radio a year and a half ago.

“You’ve got to be careful with grand jury which typically of course is secretive... In order to get it out in the public view, you have to get permission if all parties don’t agree to release it. It’s currently in the court,” she said.

Last month she said “It’s still in the hands of a judge.”

Alex J. Grant is a Springfield, Massachusetts, trial lawyer and a former federal prosecutor who has presented cases to hundreds of grand juries.

“The purpose is to investigate potential crime,” he explained.

Grand jurors don’t determine guilt or innocence. They decide whether there is enough evidence to indict a person or a corporation with a crime. Grant said they're not required to consider the defendant's side of the story.

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“And as a result, there's information that could come before the grand jury that's very harmful to somebody's reputation that might not be accurate,” Grant said.

He said grand jury secrecy law would shield that from public disclosure, unless there was an indictment. [And if someone were indicted they would have the opportunity to defend themselves in court.]

So why convene a grand jury investigation into information the public wants if it’s secret? Grant said it gives investigators a powerful tool—the subpoena.

“It is a means of getting testimony, of getting documentary evidence that you might not be otherwise able to get, but it sometimes comes at a cost. And this is one of the costs. You might not be able to disclose everything that you want to disclose,” he said.

Former Attorney General Reilly‘s 2003 investigation into the Archdiocese of Boston included the use of a grand jury. But the conclusions of his investigation were shared legally with the public.

The public report concluded that the leaders of the Archdiocese knew that substantial numbers of children had been sexually abused by priests but failed to institute policies to protect them.

Reilly declined to be interviewed for this story.

But two people who worked on Reilly’s inquiry, including a senior prosecutor, spoke on the condition they would not be named, in part because they do not want to appear to weigh in on the current investigation.

They said they gathered reams of evidence outside of the grand jury. They interviewed victims, attorneys representing victims and church officials all outside of the grand jury. They said the conclusions in the published report were based on everything they learned. But because the report does not disclose evidence obtained through the grand jury process, they said no legal authority has ever challenged it.

That report officially validated the experience of survivors. Reilly wrote in a letter that introduced the report, “The mistreatment of children was so massive and so prolonged that it borders on the unbelievable.”

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Skip Shea, a survivor of abuse at the Worcester Diocese, wants the kind of validation a public report could bring from the state’s top law enforcement official.

Shea sent a letter to Attorney General Andrea Campbell about three months ago, on March 12, 2024.

“My request [to] your office is:

1.) Release the Report 2.) If you can’t release it, give a more detailed reason to the public. 3.) Reach out to every person who came in and told their story and give them an explanation and updates.”

Within twenty minutes after emailing the letter, Shea received two phone calls from victim advocates in Campbell’s office. They told him the office is making a new effort to try to release the report. And even assigned someone who previously worked on it, to work on it again.

In a recent statement Campbell said:

"I remain committed to supporting survivors, and I understand and respect their desire to see the results of this investigation made public. My office is actively taking the appropriate steps to share our work to the fullest extent possible, but consistent with our legal obligations, we cannot comment on those efforts publicly. We will share more when we are able to do so."

Shea and others who met with the AG’s investigators want to know what the holdup is.

“We hear that it's being held up in court, but what does that mean? Who's holding it up in court? Is the church holding it up in court? And why can't we know?” Shea said.

Shea said he was first abused by a priest at St. Mary Church in Uxbridge when he was 11. He filed a lawsuit at age 42. He wrote to the AG’s office asking for an investigation when he was 58. He answered investigators' questions at age 61. Now, he is 66.

“I've been doing this for a long time, a long time,” Shea said. “Sometimes I'm really tired and sometimes I don't want to do it anymore. But if I don't, I don’t know who's going to. And then they win. You know, the church wins, politicians win. Everyone wins if I remain silent.”

Shea says silence is what protects those who abuse children.

The Diocese of Fall River said in a statement, “As a matter of policy, the Diocese of Fall River cooperates with any and all civil and criminal investigations…”

The Dioceses of Springfield and Worcester did not respond to a request for comment.

Gov. Maura Healey did not respond to a request for comment