History in the fight for justice for Maryland child sexual abuse survivors was made shortly after midnight today with the filing of three lawsuits under the state’s new Child Victims Act (CVA) that went into effect at midnight.

A man who, at age 9, was shown a gun before being forced to have sex with a priest. A woman who at age 14 was plied with drugs by teachers, sexually assaulted by them and impregnated. A man who was sodomized by detention-center caretakers at age 15.

Before Sunday, there was little these individuals could do to hold their alleged perpetrators accountable in court in Maryland. Now they’re plaintiffs in some of the first lawsuits to be filed against accused offenders under the Child Victims Act, a new law that removes the statute of limitations on child sex abuse lawsuits.

When the morning sun breaks through the restored skylights of the Baltimore Basilica, the entire ceiling glows thanks to the double-shell dome hiding those windows — a feature Thomas Jefferson suggested.

Two massive oil paintings — gifted to the basilica by France’s King Louis XVIII — hang near the marble busts and bronze tributes to archbishops and cardinals who were in charge when a little girl was raped and told she had received “holy communion,” according to a sweeping investigation released in the spring.

Horrifically abused as children decades ago, tormented throughout their emotionally fractured lives, today five courageous survivors are among the first to file catastrophic injury lawsuits under Maryland's new Child Victims Act of 2023.

The two-century-old Archdiocese of Baltimore, the first Catholic diocese in America, has filed for bankruptcy, marking a historic event in the long, sad story of clergy sex abuse and coming on the eve of a new state law that would open the church to a flood of lawsuits.

Victims’ advocates urged adult survivors of sexual abuse by members of the clergy to come forward Thursday ahead of a landmark Maryland law going into effect Sunday.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, held a news conference outside of the Baltimore Basilica on Cathedral Street to discuss the Child Victims Act, the possibility of the Baltimore archdiocese declaring bankruptcy and the still-redacted names in the attorney general’s report on child sexual abuse within the archdiocese.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office released a newer, less-redacted version Tuesday of its report on the history of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, but some key names remain hidden as people are appealing their inclusion.

A Long Island judge has ordered former pediatrician Stuart Copperman to pay $22 million in compensatory and punitive damages to a 42-year-old woman who claimed he had sexually abused her from the time she was a toddler until she turned 18.

Thanks to The Baltimore Sun’s Lee O. Sanderlin for his excellent article regarding the release of more redacted names from the Attorney General’s Report on clergy abuse and cover-up in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. But there is another story here that screams to be told: David slew Goliath, with a sling and a stone.

The accuser of a retired New Orleans Catholic priest who was indicted on a child rape charge on Thursday remembers immediately reporting the assault to the high school where it happened – and being heartbroken that nothing was ever done about it.

When Teresa Lancaster learned the Archdiocese of Baltimore could file for bankruptcy in the face of an anticipated deluge of lawsuits over its history of child sexual abuse, the news only strengthened her resolve.

The Baltimore Archdiocese is considering filing for bankruptcy as it anticipates a potential flood of lawsuits starting Oct. 1, when a new Maryland law will lift the statute of limitations on claims from those who say they were sexually abused as children, according to internal emails among church officials and a communications specialist.

The bad days aren’t as bad as they used to be for Frank Schindler.

He has a good life now. He’s married to Betsy Schindler, a woman he adores. They have a nervous orange tabby cat named Leo and live in a cozy Canton row home, a few minutes’ walk from the water. He has a job he cares about and friends who care about him.

But there are still days when the darkness creeps back in.

A Massachusetts judge on Wednesday dismissed a criminal charge against former high-ranking Catholic cleric Theodore McCarrick, ruling that the 93-year-old former archbishop of Washington is incompetent to stand trial for alleged child sexual abuse.

When a city judge called for “more transparency, not less,” it was in reference to his decision to reveal 43 blacked-out names in a Maryland attorney general’s report on the history of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Facing hundreds of lawsuits accusing the Catholic Church of enabling child sexual abuse, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco filed for bankruptcy Monday in an effort to facilitate any potential settlements.