AG Report Finds 259 Victims in Springfield Diocese and 93 Accused Clergy, Two of Them Bishops

The Massachusetts Attorney General has released the findings of a seven-year investigation into child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Fall River, Springfield, and Worcester. I read all 203 pages. If you live in Western Massachusetts, the Springfield sections are worth your attention.

The report draws on more than 300,000 pages of church records, nearly 300 clergy personnel files, and interviews with over 100 people. It covers what happened, how church leaders responded, and what is still broken today. Here is what it says about Springfield.

The numbers

The AG’s office documented 93 accused clergy and 259 survivors in the Springfield Diocese. Across all three dioceses, the totals reach 275 accused clergy and 944 survivors.

Those numbers include priests, bishops, deacons, religious brothers, and nuns. They are not filtered by any credibility finding. The AG is also clear that they are a floor, not a ceiling. Many survivors never come forward, and the report found the church’s own files were incomplete.

Two bishops and a records problem

The report calls one fact among the most important in Springfield’s history. Two of its bishops, Christopher Weldon and Thomas Dupre, appear on the diocese’s own list of clergy credibly accused of raping children. Together they led the diocese for 36 years.

Dupre was indicted by a grand jury in 2004. The case could not go forward because the statute of limitations had run. In 2020, a retired judge hired by the diocese, Peter Velis, found “unequivocally credible” a Chicopee man’s account that Weldon and two other priests raped him as an altar boy at St. Anne Parish in the 1960s. The diocese settled with him in 2023.

The AG also concluded that Springfield’s records are not complete. There have been reports for years that files from the Weldon era were destroyed. The diocese disputes that. But the AG found evidence of at least 11 allegations before the 1990s with no paper trail, and almost nothing on Richard Lavigne, a convicted abuser and longtime suspect in the 1972 murder of altar boy Danny Croteau.

How it stayed hidden

Before 2002, the pattern in Springfield looked a lot like the pattern everywhere else. Accused priests were moved, sent away for treatment, or quietly retired, and the public was told something else. A few examples from the report:

• A priest accused of raping a boy was allowed to retire to Canada “for health and personal reasons.” The parish learned the truth only after a news story in 1993.
• In 1994, Bishop Dupre let a priest accused of abusing 14-year-old girls retire for “personal reasons,” over his own commission’s recommendation to tell the parish and look for other victims.
• A priest removed in 1993 was returned to ministry in 1994 over that commission’s objection, in a different part of the diocese, with no announcement. The victim’s mother later saw him serving in a parish.
• When a treatment center warned a priest could reoffend under stress, the bishop raised concerns about how that would affect his reassignment. The center amended its report.
• In the early 1970s, a local district attorney reportedly declined to charge a priest, asking in effect where he would find twelve jurors to convict one.

The diocese created a misconduct commission in 1992 after the Lavigne case. But the report found that not every complaint reached it, and the bishop did not always follow its advice.

It didn’t stop in 2002

After the Boston Globe’s Spotlight series, the church adopted a national “zero tolerance” charter. The AG found that Springfield usually sent complaints to its review board after that. Usually is the key word.

• A complaint that went nowhere. In 2012, the diocese got a complaint that a pastor abused a child in the 1980s. The investigation was never finished. In 2017 the diocese gave him a letter of good standing for an overseas pilgrimage, and he kept organizing teen retreats until he retired in 2019. The case reached the DA in 2020, after the victim’s father called to ask what happened.
• Removed, but still working. A priest removed from ministry in 2010 was seen by his victim saying Mass in 2011. Another priest, removed in 2003, was working as a parish organist within weeks and was still on a parish payroll in late 2013.
• A recommendation nobody passed along. In 2013, the review board said a former seminarian should not work in any church role. The parish was never told. He stayed on as a religious education coordinator until 2015.
• A whistleblower who got fired. In the early 2000s, a parish employee repeatedly raised concerns about a seminarian’s behavior with kids. She was brushed off and later fired. He was ordained and is now on the diocese’s credibly accused list.

The report also found that no one is watching the priests who have been pulled from ministry. Springfield’s clergy monitor job has been empty since at least 2014. A former bishop declined to fill it, citing cost in part. A written policy requiring individual safety plans for these priests was never put into practice.

Where Springfield stands now

The AG gives the diocese real credit for changes since 2019. It commissioned the Velis investigation, formed a task force, expanded its public list of credibly accused clergy in 2021, signed a reporting agreement with the three western Massachusetts district attorneys, and released survivors from pre-2002 confidentiality agreements. Its investigators now work in trained two-person teams with full access to diocesan records. The AG found no violations of the state’s mandatory reporting law since 2002.

The report also lists gaps that remain:

• The credibly accused list has been incomplete. One survivor’s abuser was left off in 2021 because no document used the word “credible,” even though the diocese had settled her claim and paid for her therapy. An order priest who admitted abusing several Springfield children is still not listed.
• The review board uses two different standards of proof in different documents, and a credibility finding takes seven of nine votes.
• There is no conflict-of-interest policy for review board members.
• The 2025 code of conduct says staff “should” refrain from giving minors alcohol or drugs, rather than must, and has no reporting path when a supervisor is the one accused.
• The diocese has declined to sign a reporting agreement that includes the AG’s office.

Why no one is being charged, and what that means for survivors

No new criminal charges came out of this investigation. Most of the conduct happened before 2002, when Massachusetts made reckless endangerment of a child a crime and added clergy to the list of mandated reporters. Those laws can’t be applied backward. Much of the rest is past the criminal statute of limitations. Cases still within the time limit were referred to local district attorneys.

That leaves civil claims, and the AG is blunt that the current law makes them hard. Survivors can still face time limits, which work differently depending on whether the claim is against the abuser or the institution. And Massachusetts caps damages against charitable organizations at $20,000, a number that hasn’t changed since 1971. The AG now supports eliminating the civil statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse, removing the charitable cap for these claims, and opening a lookback window for survivors whose claims have already expired.

None of that is law yet. Whether a particular survivor has a claim today depends on dates, who the claim is against, and facts that need a careful look.

The bottom line

The report’s message on Springfield is mixed. The diocese has done more than it once did, and the AG says so. But a policy on paper is only as good as the people following it, and the report shows too many times when no one did.

If you or someone you love was abused by clergy in Western Massachusetts, you are not alone, and it is never too late to talk to someone. The AG’s office has survivor resources at mass.gov/ago/2026diocesereport. If you want to understand your legal options, I’m an attorney with an office in Springfield, and I’m glad to have a confidential conversation. Call (860) 913-0210 or email [email protected].