A seven-year investigation by the Massachusetts Attorney General has found evidence that 275 Catholic clerics sexually abused 944 children across three dioceses, while church leaders repeatedly failed to adequately respond to allegations. The findings have particular resonance in New Zealand, where the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care identified strikingly similar institutional failures within faith-based care
INR Report: Based on reporting by Zachary Stieber for The Epoch Times
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell has released a major investigation into sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic dioceses of Fall River, Springfield and Worcester, finding evidence that 275 Catholic clerics abused 944 children.
The investigation began in 2019 and involved examination of more than 300,000 pages of records and interviews with more than 100 people, including survivors, advocates, lawyers, clergy, diocesan employees and officials.
The Massachusetts Attorney General's report covers approximately a century of alleged abuse and institutional response.
The findings are not equivalent to 275 criminal convictions. They represent the conclusions of a state Attorney General's investigation based on documentary evidence, allegations, interviews and institutional records.
That distinction matters, particularly because many of the alleged offences occurred decades ago and cannot now be prosecuted.
But the investigation went beyond compiling allegations against individual priests and religious personnel. It examined what church authorities knew and what they did when allegations reached them.
What investigators found was a recurring institutional pattern.
Abuse Was Only Part of the Failure
According to the Attorney General, diocesan leaders sometimes failed to act on allegations or warning signs, transferred accused or offending priests between parishes without explaining why they were being moved, returned priests to ministry following treatment without adequate supervision, failed to enforce restrictions, concealed reasons priests had been removed and did not consistently report allegations to law enforcement.
The report therefore identifies two distinct failures.
The first was the sexual abuse itself.
The second was the institutional response that, in some cases, allowed alleged perpetrators continued access to children.
Campbell said the report provides the first comprehensive public accounting of what occurred in these three Massachusetts dioceses.
Previous investigations had exposed extensive abuse and institutional failures within the Archdiocese of Boston, particularly following the Boston Globe's landmark reporting in 2002.
The latest investigation extends that history well beyond Boston.
"For decades, survivors of clergy sexual abuse, including those who are no longer alive, have carried the devastating consequences of abuse, while the institutions entrusted with their care too often failed to protect them," Campbell said when releasing the findings.
She said the report documents decades during which diocesan leadership failed to adequately respond to allegations and protect children.
Why Prosecutions Are Limited
Despite the scale of the findings, the Attorney General's Office says it cannot prosecute most of the conduct identified.
Much of the alleged abuse occurred decades ago, creating legal barriers including statutes of limitation and other constraints.
Three matters were referred to local district attorneys. According to the report, one resulted in criminal charges.
This creates one of the central problems confronting historical abuse investigations.
The passage of time may allow an institution to establish what probably occurred and how its internal systems failed while simultaneously making individual criminal prosecutions difficult or impossible.
The absence of prosecutions therefore cannot automatically be interpreted as evidence that the underlying allegations were disproven.
Nor should an investigative finding automatically be treated as a criminal conviction.
Those are separate evidentiary standards.
Most Abuse Predated the 2002 Reckoning
The Massachusetts investigation found that most of the alleged abuse occurred before 2002.
That year became a turning point after extensive reporting exposed both clerical sexual abuse and the way Catholic authorities had handled accused priests.
The three dioceses investigated by Campbell's office say their safeguarding procedures have subsequently changed.
The Diocese of Worcester said the overwhelming majority of cases occurred 40 to 60 years ago and pointed to changes in screening candidates for ordination, safety training and procedures introduced during the past three decades.
Fall River Bishop Edgar da Cunha acknowledged institutional failure and said the diocese remained committed to helping survivors heal, maintaining accountability and protecting children.
Springfield Bishop William Byrne described the report as a reminder of the need for continued vigilance in responding to child sexual abuse.
The Attorney General also acknowledged that important reforms have occurred.
But reform does not erase the historical question raised by the investigation: how could abuse involving hundreds of clerics and almost a thousand reported victims continue across institutions responsible for the spiritual and pastoral care of children?
The Institutional Mechanism
The significance of the Massachusetts report lies partly in the mechanism it documents.
Abuse can initially be committed by an individual.
But when an institution receives allegations, fails to investigate adequately, conceals the reason an accused person has been removed, transfers that person elsewhere or fails to notify law enforcement, the risk is no longer confined to the original offender.
Institutional decision-making becomes part of the safeguarding failure.
This distinction is important because similar patterns have emerged from inquiries in multiple countries.
It is also where the Massachusetts investigation becomes directly relevant to New Zealand.
Does This Affect New Zealand?
New Zealand has already conducted one of the most extensive investigations of abuse in state and faith-based care undertaken anywhere in the world.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions investigated experiences between 1950 and 1999.
Its final report, Whanaketia, concluded that abuse and neglect were widespread across both state and faith-based institutions.
The Commission estimated that as many as 256,000 of approximately 655,000 people who passed through care between 1950 and 2019 may have experienced abuse or neglect.
Not all of those people were in Catholic institutions, nor was all abuse sexual. The figure covers state and faith-based care and multiple forms of abuse and neglect.
But the Commission's findings concerning faith institutions reveal patterns remarkably similar to those identified in Massachusetts.
It found that the perceived moral authority and trustworthiness of clergy and religious leaders could enable abuse, while hierarchical and opaque decision-making impeded scrutiny and complaints.
Children who disclosed abuse were frequently disbelieved.
Some offenders were relocated.
Complaints were sometimes treated internally rather than referred to police.
Senior leaders sometimes sought to protect their own reputations and those of their institutions.
The Royal Commission concluded that religious authority could provide perpetrators with both access to vulnerable people and institutional protection from scrutiny.
The Catholic Church in New Zealand
The Commission separately examined the Catholic Church's record.
Information supplied by the Church showed 1,296 reports of abuse involving 592 alleged perpetrators, including diocesan priests, members of religious orders and lay people.
The Church provided the Inquiry with the names of 27 perpetrators who had criminal convictions relating to abuse of people in Catholic care.
Again, the distinction between allegations and convictions is essential.
But the Commission's concern extended beyond individual perpetrators.
It concluded that Catholic Church leaders had historically failed to adequately acknowledge the nature and extent of abuse and neglect or accept responsibility for the resulting harm.
The Commission also found that very few senior leaders had been held accountable for institutional environments that enabled abuse.
New Zealand has an especially stark example in the Catholic Order of the Brothers of St John of God and its operation of Marylands School and Hebron Trust in Christchurch.
The Royal Commission's Stolen Lives, Marked Souls investigation concluded that the Catholic Church, the Order and the State each bore responsibility for systems that enabled abuse and neglect, ignored it or covered it up.
The Same Institutional Question
Massachusetts and New Zealand are separated by thousands of kilometres and different legal systems.
Yet the institutional question emerging from their investigations is remarkably similar.
How does an organisation respond when protecting vulnerable people conflicts with protecting the reputation, authority or interests of the institution itself?
Safeguarding procedures have changed considerably since much of the historical abuse occurred.
That is important and should be acknowledged.
But both inquiries demonstrate why institutional accountability cannot end with identifying individual offenders.
The deeper question is whether the systems surrounding those individuals exposed wrongdoing, stopped it and reported it, or instead contained the problem internally and allowed the danger to continue.
For New Zealand, the Massachusetts report is therefore not simply another overseas Catholic abuse scandal.
Our own Royal Commission has documented many of the same mechanisms.
The continuing challenge is ensuring that the institutional conditions that allowed those mechanisms to operate cannot be recreated, whether inside a church, a state institution, a school, a care facility or any organisation entrusted with children.
Independent reporting. Original context. Credited sources.
Sources
Zachary Stieber, The Epoch Times, 1 October 2026:
Evidence Shows Catholic Officials Abused 944 Children: Massachusetts AG
Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, 30 September 2026:
Attorney General's Report on Child Sexual Abuse in the Fall River, Springfield, and Worcester Dioceses
Massachusetts Attorney General's Office:
2026 Fall River, Springfield and Worcester Diocese Report
Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care:
Whanaketia, Executive Summary
Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care:
The Faith-Based Institutions Responsible for Care
Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care:
Stolen Lives, Marked Souls