Documentary record Bound by Fear
← Explore all cases
Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Boston, Massachusetts, USA · 2002

United States: John Geoghan convicted — the case that broke open the Boston scandal

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

parish priest across six Boston-area parishes

Organization

Archdiocese of Boston

Spiritual nexus

Parish boys under a priest's pastoral supervision, delivered to him repeatedly by an archdiocese that moved him rather than removed him.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2002-02-21 · jury conviction and sentence

    Massachusetts court, USA. John Geoghan, a Boston Archdiocese priest accused by more than 130 boys across six parishes over thirty years, was convicted on 21 February 2002 of indecent assault and battery on a ten-year-old boy and sentenced to nine to ten years. His serial transfers despite archdiocesan knowledge were the spine of the Boston Globe's Spotlight investigation. He was murdered by a fellow inmate in August 2003 before further trials concluded.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • pastoral and recreational supervision of parish boys across a thirty-year career

Primary record

Sources

national public broadcaster conviction report PBS NewsHour, 'Church in Crisis' coverage of the Geoghan conviction and death, with Boston Globe Spotlight reporting.

Reports the conviction, sentence, and the case's role in the 2002 scandal.

Related record

Related cases · Christian institutions & contexts

← Explore all cases