Bishop, other high-ranking Baltimore Catholic officials identified as those who helped cover up sexual abuse

BALTIMORE — In the fall of 2002, as the country first realized the scope of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, a Baltimore bishop sat in a Carroll County parochial school gym to try and make sense of it all.

Auxiliary Bishop W. Francis Malooly told a group of faithful that it was a mystery to him why priests who the Archdiocese of Baltimore had recently named as credibly accused of abuse weren’t in jail, and why they had never been fully prosecuted. Priests elsewhere were being charged every day now, he said.

It was no mystery.

In many instances, Malooly — along with the Most Revs. Richard “Rick” Woy, G. Michael Schleupner, J. Bruce Jarboe and George B. Moeller — helped abusive priests get away with their crimes, either concealing the extent of a priest’s misdeeds or striking deals with prosecutors to avoid a criminal charge.

The five were among the most powerful, high-ranking and visible officials in the archdiocese. Its annual directories show some served as chancellor, effectively the right hand of the late Cardinal William Keeler or the late Archbishop William Borders. Others were director of clergy personnel, akin to a human resources manager. Other times, they were in charge of archdiocesan finances.

In total, their names appear 257 times in a new report by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office on clergy abuse within the archdiocese. But the public hasn’t known who they are because their identities were shielded. The church paid for lawyers to fight to black out their names and a judge directed the attorney general’s office to redact them before releasing the report last month.

The Baltimore Sun reviewed thousands of pages of court records, decades of archdiocese directories, and dozens of contemporary newspaper articles to piece together details that helped reveal the men’s identities. People with knowledge of their conduct at the time or who are familiar with the report confirmed The Sun’s reporting.

The attorney general’s office provided an unredacted version of the report to the archdiocese in November, and at least 15 people have seen it. Meanwhile, the ongoing legal battle by the attorney general’s office to release a version with fewer redactions is subject to a judge’s gag order. Future closed-door hearings on the issue are likely, but the public won’t be notified of them in advance.

The report names 156 people accused of abuse, many of them now dead. The names of 10 further abusers, all living, are also redacted and have not yet been identified. The Sun is identifying these five officials because, while not accused of abuse, they were church leaders who worked to keep the extent of the scandal hidden.

The archdiocese did not return calls and emails seeking comment. The five men identified either declined to be interviewed, did not answer the phone, did not respond to voice mails and text messages or did not come to the door when a reporter visited their home. The attorney general’s office also declined to comment.

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