When news broke in 1992 that former Catholic priest James Porter, known for years to Church officials as a predatory child rapist, had sexually abused dozens of children during his clerical career, making his the worst clerical pedophilia case in U.S. history, it was hard to imagine how anything could get worse for the Church. But as American Catholics have learned since the wave of clergy molestation lawsuits began in 1985, new lows are always just around the corner.
Porter assaulted many of the children while serving in the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., which prompted the Boston Globe to report aggressively on the assaults and the Church cover-up. Under fire, an angry Bernard Cardinal Law, the archbishop of Boston, denounced the media for what he believed was sensational reporting of the scandal. Later that year, Law said in a Globe interview that his staff had gone through past molestation cases the archdiocese had investigated and found no cases that merited further attention or concern.
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