Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Other Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Missouri, USA · 2019

Missouri attorney general report: 163 credible instances of Catholic clergy abuse, 12 cases referred for prosecution

Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

Catholic priests and deacons of Missouri's four dioceses, diocesan leadership responsible for personnel files and assignments

Organization

Archdiocese of St. Louis, Diocese of Jefferson City, Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau

Spiritual nexus

The report concerns child sexual abuse committed under Catholic clerical and diocesan authority, and the institutional record-keeping and assignment practices that preserved evidence of the abuse for decades while allowing most alleged perpetrators to age, die, or outlast the statute of limitations before any referral could result in prosecution.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2019-09-13 · thirteen-month investigation and final report

    Office of the Missouri Attorney General. Reviewing personnel records for more than 2,000 priests and 300 deacons, seminarians and religious women dating to 1945 across all four Missouri dioceses, investigators identified 163 clergy or personnel with credible allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct against minors. Eighty-three were already deceased; of the 80 living, the statute of limitations had run on 46 alleged crimes, 16 cases had already been referred for local prosecution and five were already under investigation. The Attorney General referred the remaining 12 cases for potential criminal prosecution, and declined to recommend charges against any bishop or diocesan official, a decision survivor-advocacy groups criticized.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • clerical and pastoral authority
  • parish, school and rectory access to children
  • decades-long institutional record-keeping that outlived prosecutorial windows

Primary record

Sources

national wire service contemporaneous reporting NPR, 'Missouri AG Refers 12 Ex-Priests For Prosecution Of Suspected Sexual Abuse' (Sept. 13, 2019).

Reports the investigation's scope (2,000+ priests since 1945), the 163-clergy finding, the 83 deceased, the 46 time-barred, and the 12 referred for prosecution; records the Attorney General's decision not to seek charges against church hierarchy.

affected institution press corroboration St. Louis Review (Archdiocese of St. Louis), 'Missouri Attorney General report recommends referring 12 cases for prosecution' (2019).

Diocesan-press corroboration of the report's findings and the 12-case referral, published by the affected institution.

national press contemporaneous corroboration Fox News, 'Missouri AG refers 12 former Catholic priests for potential prosecution after abuse probe' (Sept. 2019).

Independent national corroboration of the 329-page report's scope and the 12-referral outcome.

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