Maryland Supreme Court: State cannot publicize those unindicted for child sex abuse by clergy – WTOP News

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The Maryland Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Attorney General’s Office cannot publish the names of Archdiocese of Baltimore clergy and staff who were cited in a grand jury probe of sexual abuse of children, but never charged.

The ruling overturns two lower courts that had agreed with the attorney general that publishing the names was justified to “make public for the first time the enormous scope and scale of abuse and concealment perpetrated by the Archdiocese of Baltimore.”

But the high court said, in a 37-page opinion Monday, that allowing publication of the names would defeat one of the main reasons for the secrecy of grand jury proceedings: Preventing unindicted persons from being “held up to public ridicule.”

“One of the primary purposes of grand jury secrecy is to protect uncharged persons from public disgrace in the absence of a criminal charge and a forum in which to seek vindication,” said the opinion written by Justice Jonathan Biran. “To overcome an objection to disclosure of otherwise secret information about an uncharged individual, a requestor must show that disclosure will serve an interest beyond the public’s interest in learning the information.”

While there are some instances in which grand jury material might be releases, Biran wrote that a court “may not order disclosure of secret grand jury material, over the objection of an uncharged individual, for the purpose of holding that person accountable in the court of public opinion.”

David Lorenz, a member of the Abuse Survivors Coalition, disagrees.

“There are people in that report [who] helped protect criminals who were committing crimes against our children. They were not doing anything,” he said Monday evening.

“I have a hard time with the Supreme Court saying that unredacting these names is not in the public interest,” Lorenz said. “It is in the public’s interest. Anybody with a child has an interest in knowing those names.”

Lorenz said Archbishop Bishop William Lori “can release the names tonight. He can fix this.”

Neither the archdiocese nor the attorney general’s office immediately responded to a request for comment on the ruling.

The attorney general’s office began its investigation into the abuse by clergy in 2018, under former Attorney General Brian Frosh (D). Hundreds of victims were interviewed, hundreds of thousands of church documents dating to the 1940s were subpoenaed by a grand jury and reviewed, cover-ups were revealed.

In April 2023, slightly more than three months after taking office, Attorney General Anthony Brown (D) released a 463-page redacted report that listed 156 members of the clergy — priests, brothers, deacons and nuns — as abusers. More than 600 children are known to have been abused by the clergy listed in the report, though investigators expect that number to likely be far higher.

A Baltimore City Circuit Court allowed the report to be printed, bur ordered about 35 names of people who had not been charged to be withheld. That was upheld for the most part by the Appellate Court of Maryland, which said that the lower court erred only in not making an individual assessment for each of the 35 individuals where their information should be withheld.

Eighteen of those named appealed to the Supreme Court of Maryland, which sided with them.

The court’s opinion Monday noted how the attorney general’s office sought to disclose the names that “will bring some measure of accountability” to the archdiocese.

“We do not minimize the harm that so many children suffered at the hands of clergy and others within AOB [Archdiocese of Baltimore],” Biran wrote. “Nor do we discount the interest of the public in understanding the history of child abuse in AOB and other institutions. Investigative journalism, criminal prosecutions, and civil actions have exposed much of what went on within AOB.”

In October 2023, about six months after the release of the report, the state’s Child Victims Act went into effect, lifting the statute of limitations to file child sex abuse claims against public and private entities. Lawmakers last year were forced to scale back that legislation, capping potential awards that could have run into billions of dollars.