BALTIMORE — Investigators with the Maryland Attorney General’s Office uncovered 80 years’ worth of child sex abuse cases inside the Catholic Church, and alleged victims want to be part of the legal proceedings over whether that report will be made public.
They say they don’t trust the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
“They claim to follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but they turn their back on the lepers of today,” said SNAP Maryland Director David Lorenz.
The Attorney General’s report identifies 600 different alleged victims and advocates want to make sure they no longer remain silenced.
Advocates have retained a pair of catastrophic injury law firms with experience representing systemic sexual abuse to make sure they have a voice in the process.
“We’ll be filing a motion to intervene so that we’ll become parties to the proceedings and then once granted standing in the proceedings, we are going to seek to have the report released,” said Attorney Barbara Hart.
That report includes the names of 158 priests, 43 who have never been publicly identified, and of them, only 13 are alive today.
While the archdiocese has said it will not oppose the report’s release, it has helped pay for attorneys on behalf of unknown parties fighting to keep the information sealed.
“Individuals were named by those survivors who reported to the attorney general,” said Gemma Hoskins, an alleged victim. “Not only as abusers, but those who were complicit in the abuse who turned away, remained silent, destroyed records or who handed a 13-year-old teenage girl a (bleep) hall pass to go to see the Devil in the chaplain’s office.”
