BOSTON - For more than 40 years, Roman Catholic Church officials here overlooked abuse ranging from the molestation of girls studying to become nuns, to drug use by priests with parish youth, to homosexual rape, according to thousands of pages of confidential archdiocese documents made public yesterday.
The records show that as recently as last year, bishops and archbishops in Boston consistently ignored parishioners' complaints while protecting priests and striving to minimize financial damage.
Many examples of clerical sexual abuse have become public since the nationwide clerical abuse scandal erupted in Boston last January. But the mountain of memoranda, letters and court filings released yesterday casts light on offenses and church practices not previously reported, sparking new outrage among many victims and their advocates.
"This material is qualitatively different than anything we have seen until now," said David Clohessy, national chairman of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
"It debunks a whole range of excuses that church officials have used: that the allegations were all ancient, that the abuse only concerned boys and that it involved just a handful of priests," said Clohessy, who flew in from St. Louis to review the documents. "What we see is that this is clearly a deep and systemic problem."
Donna M. Morrissey, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, did not return a call yesterday seeking comment on the new material.
The disclosures come amid speculation that the Boston archdiocese might declare bankruptcy because so many abuse cases are pending against it. The revelations were mandated by court order as part of a series of civil suits brought by sexual abuse victims and their families.
Lawyers for the archdiocese at first resisted the edict from Judge Constance Sweeney but then complied by presenting plaintiffs' lawyers with 11,000 pages of partially redacted documents - many written in the careful Catholic-school cursive of top-ranking prelates.
In making public about 2,000 pages yesterday, plaintiffs' lawyer Robert Sherman said reams of additional documents would be released in coming weeks. These records were filed in court here yesterday in preparation for future litigation.
The records produced yesterday focused on several priests whose cases until now had not come to light. Among them was the Rev. Robert Meffan, "a name I had never heard of," said plaintiffs' attorney Roderick MacLeish Jr., who has represented clerical abuse victims for more than a decade.
After complaints about Meffan, Cardinal Humberto Medeiros recommended as early as 1977 that the priest seek help from "some professional person." Instead he moved into a trailer and set up shop as a counselor.
By 1985 he was back in service as a parish priest. The next year, a handwritten document from Bishop Robert Banks recorded allegations that Meffan was engaged in sexual acts with girls as young as 15 who were preparing to become nuns.
A 1993 confidential report filed in the archdiocese recounted how Meffan would "attract adolescent girls, get them to enter religious orders and then visit them in various novitiates. He would link spiritual stages with sexual acts, 'what one has to do in order to progress,' and would perform the acts," the report stated.
The teen-age girls - at least three of whom went on to become nuns - often met with Meffan in his rectory office, which other priests "jokingly" called his "tank," a subsequent report continued. An archdiocese memo from 1993 showed that Meffan taught the girls to be "brides of Christ."
When questioned by church officials, Meffan denied any knowledge of such practices, the "personal and confidential" memo indicated. The documents contain no reference to legal action involving Meffan, nor do the records express concern for the girls or their families.
At close to 70 years of age, Meffan left his priestly duties. In a "Dear Father Robert" letter dated July 10, 1996, Cardinal Bernard Law praised Meffan for "the depth of your faith and the courage of your heart." There was no answer last night at a telephone number listed for Meffan in southeastern Massachusetts.
Elizabeth Mehren and Josh Getlin are reporters for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.