More than 270 Massachusetts clergy abused nearly 1,000 children, attorney general finds
Massachusetts attorney general Andrea Joy Campbell has released the first full public accounting of decades of child sexual abuse in the Fall River, Springfield and Worcester dioceses.
More than 270 Catholic clerics sexually abused nearly 1,000 children across three Massachusetts dioceses over decades, according to an investigative report released on Wednesday 30 September 2026 by the state’s attorney general.
Massachusetts attorney general Andrea Joy Campbell said the report was the first full public accounting of the abuse and institutional failures in the dioceses of Fall River, Springfield and Worcester. The investigation found that for years the dioceses knew children were being abused but “too often they protected the reputation of the church rather than protecting 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 investigation was launched in 2019 by then-attorney general Maura Healey, now Massachusetts’ governor, and reviewed more than 300,000 pages of records, with more than 100 interviews of survivors, advocates, clergy and church officials. The majority of the abuse occurred before 2002.
Campbell is calling on the state legislature to eliminate the $20,000 charitable immunity cap for civil claims of child sexual abuse, end the statute of limitations for such claims and create an indefinite lookback period for survivors whose claims have expired.
The Diocese of Worcester said it would study the report to identify improvements and strengthen efforts to keep children safe; it is the only Massachusetts diocese that does not maintain a publicly accessible list of accused clergy. Fall River bishop Edgar Moreira da Cunha said he was “filled with sorrow over the historical account of incidents and practices reflecting the tragic failings to protect our most vulnerable”.
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