BOSTON — Mental illness and addiction, the inability to form connections with others, a loss of faith — those are just some of the consequences that clergy sex abuse survivors have faced, as chronicled in a new 200-page report from the Attorney General’s Office.

The investigation into the Catholic Dioceses of Springfield, Worcester, and Fall River details widespread allegations of child sex abuse, the response from the institutions to those accusations, and recommendations for the future.

It also shows, in the victims’ own words, the unfathomable ways the abuse shaped who they’ve become.

The more than a dozen accounts included in the report are just a fraction of the hundreds of sex abuse survivors the AG’s Office said come from those Dioceses.

“As I struggle to articulate the impact of the sexual abuse inflicted on me by priest R., I recognize the layer upon layer of trauma,” one woman who was 16 when she was abused wrote. “And one word best characterizes the impact: loss.”

The woman, who chose to remain anonymous in her account in the report, said she was abused during two years on about 200 occasions.

“I struggled enormously with more terrifying nightmares, nausea, inability to focus at work, neglect of family and friends,” she wrote, “and on several occasions I felt that survival no longer seemed desirable — occasions which themselves were terrifying in their intensity and unexpectedness.”

The survivor said it changed her forever, and she wondered if not for the abuse, “Who might I have been?”

Several survivors expressed similar sentiments, writing that the abuse changed not only themselves but also their relationships.

Survivor Skip Shea wrote that the sex abuse he experienced pushed him to addiction. Just a year after getting sober, his 16-year-old daughter died in a car accident.

“She only had a sober father for a year,” he wrote. “I feel our chance at any sort of normal father/daughter relationship was robbed because of all of the struggles I had trying to cope with the abuse.”

Another woman, writing anonymously, said after she was abused by a priest, she had trouble setting foot in a church, something that strained her relationship with her mother.

“It is beyond frustrating to have learned that incidents were reported ‘decades ago’ to the Church authorities and nothing was done,” she wrote. “I ask of you, could my years of pain and suffering have been avoided? Could I have had a loving, caring relationship with my mother?”

Some of the trauma of the abuse came from the fact that the perpetrator was someone they trusted.

“He was my local priest, revered by parishioners, in charge of the altar boys, and loved by me and all the other school children,” Frank Fitzgerald wrote of North Attleboro priest James R. Porter. Porter was convicted of molesting 28 children but reportedly abused many more. He died in 2005.

Fitzgerald said that for years his brain suppressed the memories of the abuse but that it seeped into his life anyway.

“I was always sad and full of self-disgust,” he wrote. “My older son once said to me that he had never seen me ‘really laugh.’”

Another man said that he was abused by Porter when he was a 9-year-old altar boy. “I’ve never been able to develop strong relationships with the people in my life,” he wrote. “I’ve often felt feelings of personal inadequacy because of this.”

Survivors said that they not only had to live with the trauma, they also had to see their abusers in public, after the fact, while the priests maintained important and respected roles in their communities.

One woman said the priest who abused her presided over her younger sister’s funeral, at her mother’s request. The victim wrote in her statement that she’d lost her faith because of the abuse.

“God never listened,” she wrote. “I was constantly brought to the lowest times in my life. I lost my relationship with my parents. They were not there for me and did not protect me. I was just alone in my personal torment. There was no speaking of this to anyone.”

Daniel Lewis said he stopped going to his Taunton parish after being drugged and molested by a priest. He called the church, “the devil’s den, where evil prevails.”

After that, Lewis said his dreams of becoming a police officer were dashed and he struggled with drugs and alcohol. He landed in jail and struggled to find work after.

“I did pray to God to use my hand to write this as a tool,” he said. “I will continue to put pen to paper and sit down with a therapist and maybe I can learn to look into the mirror again and learn to love myself.”

_____

©2026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.