In the wake of the recent movie Spotlight, which told the story of the child sexual abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston, the Concord Monitor set out to recount how the clergy sexual abuse scandal was addressed over 10 years ago in New Hampshire. The Monitor inked a three part series this week, which described the role that Shaheen & Gordon, P.A. partner, Jim Rosenberg, played in the case when he was a prosecutor with the Attorney General’s office.
In 2003, The State of New Hampshire reached a historic agreement with the Diocese of Manchester, whereby the Diocese admitted to its own institutional responsibility for endangering the welfare of children and agreed to the disclosure of over 9,000 pages of material from its Secret Archive, exposing the Diocese’s failure to protect children from sexually abusive clergy. The Diocese also submitted to audits of its own training and process for reporting new allegations of sexual abuse. At the time, New Hampshire was the fourth most Catholic state in the nation.
“I grew up in this community, and I knew the meaningful and significant role the church played here, through school and elsewhere,” said Rosenberg in an interview. “But we were beginning to deal with victims who’d been terribly harmed and whose lives had been shaped or reshaped by sexual abuse at the hands of priests and compounded by the fact that the diocese didn’t react in real time at all. It was a very difficult and emotional balancing act for us.”
Victims still come forward every year to tell their stories.
We at Shaheen & Gordon, P.A. are grateful to the Concord Monitor for shining light anew on this painful chapter in our state’s history and credit our partner, Jim Rosenberg, for pouring energy and effort into the prosecution of this case over a decade ago.
To learn more, please visit the Concord Monitor online to read “A Boston scandal, uncovered by the Globe, spreads north” and “After months of digging, investigators uncover church abuse, then turn up the heat.”
