Nearly 1,000 children sexually abused at three Massachusetts dioceses by 270 Catholic clerics over decades: report

More than 270 Catholic clerics sexually abused ​nearly 1,000 children across three Massachusetts dioceses over decades, according to an investigative report the state’s attorney general released ‌on Wednesday.The report provided what Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell called the first full public accounting of the abuse and institutional failures that allowed it to proliferate for more than half a century at the Catholic dioceses of Fall River, Springfield and Worcester.Most of the abuse detailed in the report occurred before 2002, ​the year the clergy sex abuse scandal burst onto the international stage due to a Pulitzer Prize-winning report by the ​Boston Globe on how officials at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston routinely covered up sex abuse by ⁠priests.The state attorney general’s investigation documented years of similar issues at the three dioceses in other parts of Massachusetts, which Campbell said ​knew children were being abused by priests and other clerics.“Too often they protected the reputation of the church rather than protecting children,” Campbell ​said.The report counted at least 275 members of the clergy who were accused of abusing 944 children.“Behind every one of those numbers is a child whose safety was violated, a family that was changed forever, and a survivor who carried the trauma of that abuse for years and, in many cases, decades,” Campbell ​told reporters.The Diocese of Worcester, in a statement, said it would study the report “to identify any additional improvements that can be made to ​respond to victims of past abuse and to continue to strengthen efforts to keep children safe.”Fall River Bishop Edgar da Cunha issued an apology to ‌survivors of ⁠child sexual abuse, saying he was “filled with sorrow over the historical account of incidents and practices reflecting the tragic failings to protect our most vulnerable.”Springfield Bishop William Byrne in a statement called th...