Here is an article that is not about any of the “normal” topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, I believe it is very important to the victims of this abuse and therefore should be publicized in all sorts of online places.
Kurt Rupprecht was elated last spring when the Maryland attorney general’s office went public with its report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. But it left the Harford County victims’ advocate, a survivor of childhood sexual assault, wanting more.
The “Attorney General’s Report on Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore” was just that: though it listed 156 clergy and staff who abused more than 600 children over eight decades, it covered only the church’s Baltimore jurisdiction, the largest of the three in the state. It did not address the Archdiocese of Washington, a territory that includes the Maryland suburbs of the nation’s capital and southern Maryland, or the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, which includes Maryland’s Eastern Shore counties.
“People who don’t follow this story closely may think of the attorney general’s report as ‘The Maryland Report.’ But it’s not,” says Rupprecht, 53, who was abused in 1979 in Salisbury, which is part of the Wilmington diocese. “It’s crucial to the survivor community that people be able to grasp the statewide scope of the tragedy.”
The Baltimore Sun has built the largest and only searchable database in the state, publishing Friday a list of 309 people with ties to the church who were accused of child sexual abuse or misconduct and lived or worked anywhere in Maryland, regardless of where the alleged acts occurred. It adds 107 names, researched by Sun reporters, to the people listed in the attorney general report issued in April.
Since the crisis emerged into the public view more than 20 years ago, church officials and authorities have established policies to better investigate and hold offenders responsible. But amid efforts to heal, the church continues to be rocked by new revelations even as gaps in transparency persist, some stemming from church and law enforcement criteria about how to address information about accusations.
You can read more in an article in the baltimoresun.com web site at: https://tinyurl.com/4skfeapp.