One moment in the two-hour press conference hit Skip Shea the hardest.
From his home in Worcester County last week, he watched the live stream of the Rhode Island attorney general presenting his investigation into decades of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. And then Ann Hagan Webb, 73, stepped up to the bank of microphones.
“This report finally declared me credible,” Webb said, her voice breaking. She was sexually abused by her pastor starting when she was 5 years old. She said the church’s denial of what happened “has haunted me in ways I cannot begin to describe.”
The release of this investigation reminded victims like Shea of the reckoning they’ve been demanding for years in Massachusetts.
While the Massachusetts attorney general’s investigation into the Boston Archdiocese was made public in 2003, the investigation into the dioceses of Worcester, Springfield and Fall River has never been released.
“Right now, everyone is invisible.”Skip Shea
Shea, 66, was abused in the Worcester Diocese as a child and has been asking the Massachusetts attorney general’s office for an investigation like this since 2018, when now-Gov. Maura Healey was the attorney general.
“My question is why don’t we have a grand jury investigation into all the dioceses in Massachusetts? Not just Boston,” he wrote Healey in 2019. “Some of us may find a small piece of justice.”
A few years later, Shea thought justice was in sight.
He was invited to meet with two investigators and a state police officer in the attorney general’s Worcester office on Sept. 29, 2021. He told them about the abuse that started when he was 11. It ended after he turned 16. More than three priests assaulted him.
Shea said the attorney general’s office was trying to figure out if they could prosecute.
“I think that they were hoping to glean more from me,” he recalled. “Very nice people. I felt they completely had my back. And I know that they really wanted to help.”
After Andrea Campbell was sworn in as attorney general in 2023, a victim witness advocate wrote Shea that the office hoped to release a report in 30 days. That was three years ago.
“I understand the survivors’ and public’s frustration about the release of our report,” Campbell said in a recent statement. “My office is taking the appropriate steps to share the full extent of our work with the public, and I am bound to the rules of law that do not allow me to publicly comment on those specific efforts.”
Public reports in other states have led to changes in church policies and state laws to better protect children and support victims who seek justice. Some investigations, including Rhode Island’s, resulted in criminal charges.
David Lewcon, 71, also provided information in 2021 to the attorney general’s investigators.
He was molested by one of the same priests who abused Shea, at St. Mary Church in Uxbridge, starting when Lewcon was 16 years old.
By the time the attorney general’s investigators contacted him, he had successfully filed a lawsuit and felt as if he had moved on with his life. But he said when he described what happened to investigators, it forced him to relive it.
“It’s sort of like peeling off the scab one more time,” Lewcon said.
Since that meeting, he has never heard from the investigators.
“The fact that they did it and there was never a follow up… It’s just another kind of violation as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
Some survivors were not invited to meet with the attorney general’s investigators.
Cyndi MacKenzie, 61, was abused by her priest from the Notre Dame Church in Southbridge, starting when she was 4 years old. Her parents welcomed the priest into their home, one of several places where he molested her.
“A lot of the sexual assault happened at the church in the sacristy,” MacKenzie said. That’s a room behind the altar, where the priest puts on his vestments and prepares for Mass.
Later, MacKenzie successfully sued the priest.
She went on to lead support groups for others abused by priests. And she helped Maine’s attorney general get information from survivors for his 2004 investigation.
Despite her public advocacy, MacKenzie was never contacted by the Massachusetts attorney general’s office for its investigation into the Worcester Diocese.
Still, she wants it released.
“Why can’t we see it? Those of us who are affected by these crimes should be able to see it,” she said.
Even though the diocese hasn’t publicly named the abusers, MacKenzie wants the attorney general’s office to name the priest who raped her in the report.
“At least law enforcement will validate what happened to me,” she said.
The Worcester and the Springfield dioceses did not respond to a request for comment. The Fall River Diocese wrote that its policy is to cooperate with law enforcement, including the attorney general’s office.
Skip Shea said a public acknowledgement of the crimes against children in these dioceses would be a “real step towards actual healing.”
Like other victims he knows, the sexual abuse he suffered as a child led to depression and a suicide attempt as an adult. Cyndi MacKenzie said at one point she also wanted to end her life.
“I do believe it would save lives,” said Shea about a report. “Because I think someone might get help because they’ve been recognized, they’ve been seen. And right now, everyone is invisible.”
Shea wants survivors in Massachusetts to have the same kind of visibility Rhode Island victims now have.
Resources: Anyone in a mental health crisis or concerned about someone they know who may be suicidal can call or text the suicide and crisis lifeline at 988.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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