Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Fall River, Massachusetts, USA · 1993

United States: James Porter pleads guilty to 41 counts against 28 children

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

parish priest in charge of altar boys and parochial-school children

Organization

Diocese of Fall River, St Mary's, North Attleboro

Spiritual nexus

Parish and parochial-school children under their priest — the pre-Boston case that first forced the pattern into national view.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 1993-12-06 · guilty plea and sentence

    Massachusetts court, USA. Former priest James Porter pleaded guilty on 6 December 1993 to 41 indictments of sexually assaulting 28 children under sixteen in southeastern Massachusetts in the 1960s — admitting roughly 100 victims across states over three decades — and was sentenced to 18–20 years. He completed the sentence in 2004 and died in 2005 awaiting a civil-commitment hearing. The case prompted early US bishops'-conference policy changes.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • parish and school authority over children of the diocese

Primary record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting conviction history report 'Ex-Priest James Porter; Convicted in Child Molestations', The Washington Post (obituary, 2005).

Confirms the plea, counts, sentence and history.

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