MAP Forum

Former Rep. Marge Markey of New York passed away recently. She was a force, and she recognized early on the value of ending the statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims. We first met in 2003, not long after the Boston Globe’s Spotlight series that introduced the public to the paradigm of powerful adults covering up the horrific sexual abuse of children. Markey was deeply motivated by personal experience—a priest abused her son, Charles— and in true “mom” fashion, never gave up, despite tremendous opposition. Early on, it was hard to get even a hearing on the issue. The subject—child sex abuse—was taboo; many Catholics were insulted by the dark light it was casting on their church, and the public understanding of such a cover-up was in its infancy. The media wasn’t willingly covering the topic until the Globe bravely detailed the truth that so many couldn’t abide at first: holy men in the Catholic Church were responsible for endangering their own parishioners’ children to protect their image and finances. There had been a drip-drip of stories about such abuse earlier, with the brilliant Jason Berry spearheading high-quality reporting when many papers refused to cover the issue. The leading archive of the Church’s clergy sex abuse, bishopaccountability.org, dates the crisis back to the 19th century. It took the Globe’s reporting, though, to switch the focus from bad apples in the Church to an organized, systemwide cover-up, which eventually turned out to be a global phenomenon.