You’ve read the sprawling and sordid saga of John Geoghan — the now-infamous defrocked Boston priest and convicted child molester accused of assaulting at least 130 children over three decades (see "Cardinal Law, the Church, and Pedophilia," News and Features, March 23, 2001) — and now you might think: Geoghan is a sick criminal, but so are his Church supervisors. As has become all too apparent in recent media coverage, officials at the Archdiocese of Boston, including Bernard Cardinal Law, knew about the former priest’s sexual improprieties yet failed to do anything to stop them.

So why haven’t archdiocesan officials who aided and abetted a serial pedophile faced criminal charges? Because such activity, in fact, isn’t a crime. Under Massachusetts law, the only criminal charge that prosecutors could file against Church supervisors is that of accessory after the fact. Prosecutors, in other words, would have to prove that Geoghan’s superiors actually shared in his criminal intent — that they, too, wanted the one-time priest to sexually assault the children of Catholic parishioners. As Boston attorney Wendy Murphy, a former Middlesex County prosecutor who handled child-abuse cases, points out, "That’s a difficult argument to make. The law doesn’t like to punish somebody who didn’t intend the crime, but rather got sucked into a negligent situation."

Now, however, the law could change. This week, State Senator Marian Walsh (D-West Roxbury) expects to file legislation that would create a new criminal statute in Massachusetts meant to stop something like the Geoghan scandal from happening again. The bill, known as "An Act to Protect Children From Physical and Sexual Abuse," would make it a state crime for an employer, by improperly hiring, retaining, or supervising an employee, to allow an employee to assault a child. The crime, as the bill stipulates, "shall be punished by imprisonment" for up to five years.

Clearly, the timing of this legislation is not happenstance. Walsh, a Catholic legislator who’s carefully followed the Geoghan scandal, explains that its "horror and tragedy" prompted her to consider more comprehensive ways to protect the state’s children. What seems especially "overwhelming and tragic and unspeakable" about these cases, she says, is that Cardinal Law and other Church officials turned a blind eye to Geoghan’s child molestation. "There was a long pattern of documented tragedy whereby children were getting raped," adds Walsh, who has just begun lobbying her fellow legislators to co-sponsor her bill. "We think there should be criminal responsibility for adults who allow children to be physically and sexually abused."

The proposed Massachusetts legislation, aimed at fighting the silence surrounding sexual abuse, may be seen as radical elsewhere. After all, says former prosecutor Murphy, "I know of no other state that’s even suggested what this legislation seems to suggest." That, of course, isn’t to say that such a criminal statute isn’t needed here. Right now, there are very limited incentives — primarily the threat of high-priced civil settlements — for employers to identify and root out abusive employees. But if this legislation passes, employers will have far more at stake. "When the corporate head may go to jail and suffer public humiliation for failing to report abuse," Murphy adds, "you don’t mess around. It’s the strongest sanction that we have, and I’m all in favor of it."

Walsh, not surprisingly, agrees: "You don’t have to be a practicing Catholic to figure out that this scandal is an unspeakable tragedy that was avoidable if adults had only acted responsibly. The bottom line here is protecting the children."