‘Keepers’ survivors expand arguments on why Maryland AG report into Catholic clergy sexual abuse should be public

BALTIMORE — Women featured in “The Keepers,” a 2017 Netflix documentary series about clergy sexual abuse at a Baltimore-area Catholic girls school in the 1960s and ‘70s, expanded on their request Friday for the full public release of a report examining sexual misconduct by clergy throughout the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Teresa Lancaster and Jean Wehner, who were victimized during their time at Archbishop Keough High School, filed their initial motion Wednesday after learning from a Baltimore Sun story that Baltimore’s Roman Catholic archdiocese is helping pay legal fees for a group of people named in the report who are asking a judge to make secret the court proceedings around its release.

In a supplement to the motion, filed on Friday morning, an attorney representing Lancaster and Wehner is making additional arguments for the report’s release, including that it no longer should be considered privileged material because the archdiocese already has a copy of the report.

Four years ago, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh ordered an investigation into the church’s history of sexual abuse. His office completed its report in mid-November, a 456-page document detailing allegations of sexual abuse and torture at the hands of priests and other church officials going back eight decades.

The report, which also reveals how Catholic officials through the decades covered up abuse, and in some cases, enabled it, is not public. It relies on more than 100,000 pages of grand jury materials, which are secret under Maryland law without a court order releasing them.

Frosh’s office filed a motion Nov. 17 asking a Baltimore Circuit Court judge’s permission to release the report, saying to do so would be in the public’s interest.

But Kurt Wolfgang, the women’s attorney, believes there is no longer any reason to presume the report is privileged material. In Friday’s court filing, Wolfgang, who also heads the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, wrote that because the archdiocese has a copy of the report, its secrecy under grand jury protections no longer exists.

“Recent news reports indicate that the entirety of the report has been released to an erstwhile target of the investigation, the Archdiocese of Baltimore,” Wolfgang wrote, calling the disclosure “peculiar.”

“When information is sufficiently widely known, it loses its character as grand jury material,” Wolfgang added.

The Sun first reported Nov. 18 that the attorney general’s office had provided the report to church officials around midday Nov. 15.

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