Outrage in Boston: The Sexual Abuse Scandal and the Downfall of Cardinal Bernard Law

In early 2002, The Boston Globe exposed a massive scandal of sexual abuse by Catholic clergymen of that archdiocese reaching back forty years. For more than a year, the newspaper ran almost daily stories, sometimes several in one edition, about the horrors endured, the mishandling and cover up of the situation, the outrage it provoked, and the ordeal of Cardinal Bernard Law. For the most part, only the inhabitants of Boston learned the details of the tragedy which befell the Catholic Church there and led to the downfall of the senior cardinal in America. The following article narrates the calamitous story.