Attorney General Andrea Campbell announced Wednesday that her office found evidence that more than 270 priests abused nearly 1,000 children over several decades in Massachusetts. But she said she is not prosecuting or indicting any for the alleged crimes despite spending years investigating.
Why? The short answer: In many cases, Massachusetts’s statute of limitations put up a barrier to criminal prosecutions.
What’s a statute of limitations?
In short, it’s a law that allows prosecutors to bring a case for most crimes but only within a specific time period after the crime was allegedly committed.
Campbell’s office determined that it could not bring criminal prosecutions stemming from what it found from its years-long investigation, either because the specific statute of limitations for particular crimes had expired or because the alleged abuse was not considered a crime under state law at the time it occurred.
Much of the misconduct it uncovered, Campbell’s office said, occurred before Massachusetts passed a raft of changes in 2002 in the wake of Globe reporting on clergy sexual abuse that criminalized reckless endangerment of children and made priests and other clergy mandated reporters of child abuse.
The Legislature has repeatedly extended the statute of limitations for crimes against children in recent decades, including in 2006, when lawmakers eliminated the criminal statute of limitations for most child sexual abuse felonies and reckless endangerment. That change had a caveat: Any charges filed more than 27 years after the crime happened must also be supported by “independent evidence that corroborates the allegation,” according to the attorney general’s office.
Charges can be filed after that period, for example, if the identity of the accused offender is established through DNA analysis.
But Campbell said her team faced other limitations, namely, that they “cannot apply a criminal law retroactively.” For example, even when lawmakers eliminated the limitations on bringing reckless endangerment charges in 2006, a crime that was committed before 2000 could still not be prosecuted under that statute.
In other instances, Campbell’s office said, the offending clergy identified in its report are also dead.
So what are the limits on civil lawsuits?
Under current Massachusetts law, survivors of childhood sexual abuse must file any civil lawsuit within 35 years of the alleged abuse, or within seven years of when the victim knew “or reasonably should have discovered” that the misconduct caused “an emotional or psychological injury or condition,” whichever comes later, according to the state.
The 35-year countdown, for child victims, begins after they turn 18, meaning they must have filed a lawsuit before they turn 53.
By comparison, 20 other states and Washington, D.C., had eliminated the civil statute of limitations for some or all child sexual abuse claims as of last November, according to the Boston-based advocacy group, Enough Abuse.
Campbell said Wednesday that the “ultimate responsibility for accountability, in many instances, rests with diocese leadership.” She has called on the three dioceses her office investigated — in Springfield, Worcester, and Fall River — to better report and investigate its offending members. That included asking the Worcester Diocese to publicize “credibly accused” clergy, as other Massachusetts dioceses have done.
Is there more the state can do?
Yes, according to Campbell.
“Massachusetts law continues to create significant barriers,” she said, emphasizing that many victims in the report waited “decades” to share their abuse.
Campbell, 44, herself publicly disclosed for the first time Wednesday that she, too, is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
“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 said. “They continue to carry this trauma even today.”
Some on Beacon Hill, with Campbell’s support, are seeking to change the state’s statute of limitations on civil litigation.
An amendment to eliminate the civil statute of limitations, sponsored by State Representative John Lawn, a Watertown Democrat, is currently sitting in closed-door negotiations in the Legislature on a primary healthcare bill.
Massachusetts extended the time frame within which survivors of sexual abuse must file a lawsuit more than a decade ago. In 2014, the Legislature passed a bill that would give victims an additional 32 years to bring lawsuits against alleged abusers; the previous age limit was 21.
Campbell is also backing the creation of an “indefinite lookback period,” meaning survivors could file lawsuits they previously might not have been able to without a specific deadline.
Some lawmakers said they hope the report released Wednesday would help spur movement on removing those limits, as well as other proposals aimed at supporting victims of abuse.
“There’s an urgency” this year, Lawn said. “This has been going on for an awful long time, and a lot of powerful institutions have been trying to block it ... but I think these institutions should be held accountable for harming children.”
Anjali Huynh can be reached at anjali.huynh@globe.com.