Long before Spotlight, there was James Porter. The Attorney General’s report on the Fall River, Springfield and Worcester dioceses, released September 30, 2026, returns to the Fall River priest again and again, nearly fifty times in its 203 pages, because his case shows nearly every failure the report documents: the “cures” that did not work, the transfers, the priests who looked away, and a diocese that told a survivor to “leave it in the hands of the Lord.”
It also shows how reform actually came, according to the report: not from the Church, but from a survivor who tracked Porter down himself.
Who James Porter was
The report describes Porter as “accused of molesting hundreds of children and criminally convicted of abusing more than two dozen during a ministry that spanned less than fifteen years.” Elsewhere it says he “was accused of molesting more than two hundred children during his 14 years as a priest.” He was, in the report’s words, “a charismatic man and talented athlete, who boasted that he had once been a Golden Gloves boxer,” the kind of priest who was given scouting, religious education and youth groups.
Schoolchildren had a nickname for him, the report says, and asked each other whether he had “tackled” them yet. Other Fall River offenders had nicknames too. The report’s point: the abuse was, in places, “an open secret.”
The “cures”
“By the time Fall River priest James Porter was sent to the Servants of the Paraclete in New Mexico for treatment in 1967, he had already failed to respond to any of the prior ‘cures’ offered to him, including electroshock therapy at a private hospital in Wellesley,” the report says. “Each time Porter was returned to ministry after a hospitalization, he quickly re-engaged in past actions, molesting the children of his parish.”
He went to New Mexico on the recommendation of Paul Shanley, a Boston priest the report describes as “himself a prolific abuser.” While in treatment there, Porter “celebrated Mass at various parishes on the weekends.” The treatment center wrote to Fall River’s Bishop James Connolly hoping, failing a cure, “to be given clear outlines of the fields of his safe priestly activity.” The report’s answer: “There was no such field.” Porter moved through dioceses in New Mexico, Nevada, Texas and Minnesota, “victimizing children in each state.”
The priest who closed the door
The report says the Fall River Diocese “and select families were aware of Porter’s predation,” yet police chiefs in the three Massachusetts communities where he served “reportedly had no official record of complaints about him.” In 1992, one victim alleged publicly that a priest serving with Porter at St. Mary’s Church in Mansfield “had walked in while Porter was raping him, but simply closed the door and walked away”; other victims described at least six such occasions.
“Within a year of this information becoming public, then-Bishop Sean O’Malley elevated the witnessing priest to monsignor,” the report says. After that priest’s death, the diocese learned of allegations that he had abused children himself. “The priest is presently on Fall River’s Credibly Accused list.”
“Leave it in the hands of the Lord”
Frank Fitzpatrick was abused by Porter as a student at St. Mary’s School in North Attleboro in the early 1960s. In 1989, the report says, he went to the chancellor of the Fall River Diocese and disclosed it. “The chancellor advised Fitzpatrick to ‘leave it in the hands of the Lord’ and did not tell him that Porter had been the subject of similar accusations at each of his parish assignments.”
Fitzpatrick was a private investigator. He found Porter in Minnesota, by then laicized, married, with four children, and called him. “Porter answered Fitzpatrick’s questions, admitting in a series of calls tape-recorded by Fitzpatrick that he had sexually abused children, though he told Fitzpatrick that he did not recall the victims’ names.”
In 1992, Fitzpatrick placed newspaper ads asking, “Do you remember Father Porter?” The survivors who came to his gathering, the report says, “recounted being surprised to find friends, classmates, and even family members in the assembled group.” With attorney Roderick MacLeish, they went public. In 1992 and 1993, Porter was charged and convicted of molesting dozens of children.
What changed, and what did not
“Following the James Porter scandal and the civil settlement it reached with survivors, the Fall River Diocese formed its first Review Board in 1993 under then-Bishop Sean O’Malley,” the report says, along with policies for reporting allegations to civil authorities. It credits Porter’s survivors with “the first major reforms in the diocesan processes.”
But the same report finds that for nearly twenty years after the 2002 Dallas Charter, Fall River kept its Review Board from hearing allegations against whole categories of priests, a practice that “continued until 2020, after the Attorney General initiated this investigation.”
The report includes survivor statements, among them one from Fitzpatrick. “It wasn’t the Church, the self-proclaimed arbiters of goodness, who did the good deed,” he wrote. “It was us.”
Frequently asked questions
Who was James Porter?
A Fall River Diocese priest who, according to the Attorney General’s 2026 report, was accused of molesting more than two hundred children in about 14 years as a priest and was criminally convicted in 1992 and 1993 of abusing dozens. He was moved through treatment centers and parishes in several states.
Who is Frank Fitzpatrick?
A Porter survivor and private investigator who, after the Fall River Diocese told him in 1989 to “leave it in the hands of the Lord,” found Porter, recorded him admitting abuse, and in 1992 gathered other survivors through newspaper ads, leading to Porter’s prosecution and the diocese’s first reforms.
What did the AG report say about Porter and the Fall River Diocese?
That the diocese and some families knew of his abuse while police had no official record, that a fellow priest allegedly witnessed abuse and did nothing and was later made a monsignor, and that the diocese formed its first Review Board in 1993 after the Porter scandal.
Sources: Office of the Attorney General, Report on Diocese Investigation (2026), read in full at mass.gov, including its accounts of James Porter, the Servants of the Paraclete, the Fall River Review Board, and the survivor statement of Frank Fitzpatrick. Quotations are from the report, which in turn cites Boston Globe reporting from 1992 and 1993. General information, not legal advice.