In 1995, Phil Saviano was negotiating a settlement with the Diocese of Worcester over the abuse he suffered as a boy at the hands of his parish priest. The diocese would pay, but only if he signed a nondisclosure agreement. Saviano refused. He took a smaller settlement that, after legal fees, came to $5,700, and kept the right to talk about what happened to him.
He went on to help the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team expose abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston. The Attorney General’s report on the Fall River, Springfield and Worcester dioceses, released September 30, 2026, tells his story as an example of how the dioceses bought silence. Here is what the report says about the nondisclosure agreements, and about the Worcester bishop who, it says, made “no secret” of never reporting abuse to police.
“The agreements were expansive”
From the report’s section on nondisclosure agreements:
“The dioceses frequently used nondisclosure agreements to ensure the silence of survivors and protect their institutional reputation. The dioceses required survivors who successfully reached settlements of civil claims to sign documents barring them from disclosing the facts or terms of the settlement or any statements made during its mediation.”
The Fall River Diocese’s form, according to the report, “prohibited the victim from discussing ‘the existence or nature of her claims or the fact or amount of this settlement,’ including the terms of the release itself.” The report says the dioceses “regularly employed these agreements until the early 2000s as a condition for any type of civil relief offered to clergy abuse survivors.”
The $5,700 price of speaking
Saviano was abused by his parish priest, David Holley, for a year and a half in the 1960s, according to the report. When he negotiated with the Worcester Diocese in 1995, the diocese “conditioned the financial settlement on Saviano’s signing a nondisclosure agreement.” He refused and accepted “a smaller settlement, one that amounted to just $5,700 after legal fees, in exchange for retaining the right to speak about the abuse.”
The report quotes what he later told the Boston Globe: “If I had not been dying of AIDS, I would not have had the courage to come forward, but at that point my career was over, I was on my way out physically, my reputation was shot in the eyes of many people, and I didn’t have a lot to lose. This was a final opportunity to effect some change and address this thing that happened to me when I was a kid.”
He founded a New England chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests and, the report says, “played a critical role in the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigation.” The report cites his 2021 obituary in the Washington Post.
A bishop’s policy: never call the police
The section that follows is titled “Failure to Notify Law Enforcement.” It opens: “Our review of the dioceses indicates that their most fundamental failure was the inability to recognize that abuse is more than a moral failing. It is a crime.”
It then describes Bishop Timothy Harrington, who led the Worcester Diocese from 1983 to 1994, who “made no secret of his policy to never report allegations to law enforcement authorities.” According to the report:
- “Even if he believed the allegations, Harrington refused to report them because he was not legally required to do so at the time and the resulting publicity could harm the Church.”
- “Before taking any steps against an accused priest, he required victims to face their abusers,” then made his own credibility determination.
- He “discouraged some people from coming forward” because such matters are “like a divorce … everybody gets hurt.”
- He removed priests only “when they admitted their misbehavior, or when their case became public.”
The report quotes a 1998 decision by Superior Court Judge Thayer Fremont-Smith: “one wonders how he could have believed that the normal Catholic could be expected to be more scandalized by the revelation that there are pedophiles in the priesthood, than by the revelation that, allegedly for decades, when pedophiles were exposed, rather than being removed from the active ministry, they were frequently merely reassigned to another parish where they could continue, with impunity, their assaults on other unsuspecting youngsters.”
Why the silence mattered legally
Harrington was right about one thing: at the time, he was not required to report. Clergy did not become mandated reporters of child abuse in Massachusetts until 2002. The report draws the consequence: because the dioceses did not report, some priests “with extensive credible allegations against them, were not prosecuted and were not convicted; they were therefore able to pass criminal background checks both within and outside the diocese, and to continue their access to children.”
Nondisclosure agreements compounded the problem. A survivor bound not to discuss “the existence or nature” of a claim could not warn a parish, a school or a police department. Cases that were never reported then are, as the report explains elsewhere, largely beyond the statute of limitations now.
Frequently asked questions
Did Massachusetts dioceses use nondisclosure agreements with abuse survivors?
Yes, according to the Attorney General’s September 30, 2026 report, which says the dioceses “regularly employed these agreements until the early 2000s as a condition for any type of civil relief offered to clergy abuse survivors.”
Who was Phil Saviano?
A survivor abused by a Worcester Diocese priest in the 1960s who, in 1995, refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement and accepted a settlement of $5,700 after legal fees so he could speak publicly. He later founded a New England chapter of SNAP and helped the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigation. He died in 2021.
Were priests required to report abuse before 2002?
No. Massachusetts added clergy to its mandated reporter law in 2002. The report says Worcester Bishop Timothy Harrington, who led the diocese from 1983 to 1994, had a policy of never reporting allegations to law enforcement.
Sources: Office of the Attorney General, Report on Diocese Investigation (2026), sections on Nondisclosure Agreements and Failure to Notify Law Enforcement, read in full at mass.gov. Quotations, including Saviano’s statement to the Boston Globe and Judge Fremont-Smith’s 1998 decision, are as quoted in the report. General information, not legal advice.