James Porter
James Robert Porter, born in a Boston suburb, was a Roman Catholic priest who became notorious for his extensive history of sexual abuse during his clerical career. After his ordination in 1960, Porter admitted to molesting between fifty and one hundred children, with reports of his abuse spanning several parishes in Massachusetts and Minnesota. His actions led to a pattern of complaints and reassignments rather than accountability, with Porter undergoing treatments that he claimed affected his memory of the abuse. In the 1990s, he faced legal consequences for his actions, ultimately pleading guilty to multiple counts of sexual assault and being sentenced to prison.
Porter's case is significant as he was the first priest to serve prison time in the wake of the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandals. His actions not only affected his numerous victims but also had a lasting impact on the Catholic Church, leading to significant financial settlements and a broader acknowledgment of the systemic issues surrounding clergy abuse. By the time of his death in 2005, he was still entangled in legal processes regarding his status as a sexual predator. The widespread nature of his abuse and the response it elicited contributed to a larger movement for accountability within the Church, prompting many other victims to come forward.
Subject Terms
James Porter
American priest and pedophile
- Born: January 2, 1935
- Birthplace: Revere, Massachusetts
- Died: February 11, 2005
- Place of death: Boston, Massachusetts
Major offenses: Sodomy, indecent assault and battery on children, and unnatural and lascivious acts
Active: 1960-1974, 1986-1987
Locale: Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas
Sentence: Six months in prison in Minnesota; eighteen to twenty years in prison in Massachusetts
Early Life
James Robert Porter (POR-tuhr) was born in a suburb of Boston. His father was a chemist for an oil company. Porter graduated from Boston College with a degree in mathematics in 1956 and attended St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest on April 2, 1960.
Criminal Career
Porter began his career as a priest in 1960. He later admitted that during his priesthood, he molested between fifty and one hundred girls and boys, beginning with his first assignment at St. Mary’s in North Attleborough, Massachusetts. Among these victims was Frank Fitzpatrick, who grew up to be a Rhode Island private investigator; he later tracked down Porter and publicized the abuse he suffered at Porter’s hands as an altar boy. When concerned parents notified Porter’s superiors of the abuse, he was reassigned to another parish. This pattern of molestation, accusation, and transferal to other parishes continued for years. Throughout this period, Porter underwent electroshock therapy (which he later blamed for his loss of memory of the abuse) and spent a prolonged period at an institution designed for priests with sexual abuse problems in New Mexico.
Pronouncing himself “cured,” Porter resumed his priestly duties in Minnesota in 1969. However, he was dismissed from his assigned parish in 1970 after allegations of sexual abuse; he then found employment at a Minnesota bank after he received a dispensation from the priesthood at his request. He married Verlyne Kay Bartlett in 1976, quit his job, and raised his four biological children before divorcing his wife in 1995. He later admitted to molesting his children’s fifteen-year-old babysitter, and his former wife testified that she suspected that Porter had also molested their oldest son, who later abused his own three-year-old brother before dying of a drug overdose at age twenty-three.
Legal Action and Outcome
In December of 1992, Porter served four months of a six-month sentence for sexual assault on a minor in Minnesota. On December 6, 1993, Porter pleaded guilty to forty-one indictments of sexual assault on twenty-eight children under the age of sixteen in southeastern Massachusetts. He was sentenced to eighteen to twenty years in a maximum-security prison. More than five dozen victims then dropped their lawsuits in exchange for a cash settlement of more than five million dollars by the diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. Porter finished serving his sentence in January, 2004, but continued to be incarcerated until a civil commitment hearing concerning his sexual dangerousness could be completed. He was still awaiting this hearing at the time of his death in 2005.
Impact
Father James Porter was the first priest to serve time in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal of the 1990’s. According to John Daignault, a Harvard Universitypsychologist, Porter’s victims formed “the largest single group of victims of one perpetrator, in a position of authority, in psychology’s history.” Hundreds of victims stepped forward as a result of this case, and the settlements that were awarded by the Catholic Church in this case and other cases precipitated a financial crisis in many Catholic dioceses both in the Boston area and in other major cities within the United States.
Bibliography
The Boston Globe. Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church. Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 2002. In methodical detail, reporters from The Boston Globe assemble their chronicles of the investigation of the sex abuse story in the Archdiocese of Boston in 2001-2002. The book recounts the graphic stories of the victims, the official cover-up, and the reaction of Boston Catholics to the scandal.
Jenkins, Philip. Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Jenkins traces the most prominent cases of pedophile priests since the early 1980’s, offering an objective look at the extent of the problem, the effects of the media’s coverage, the financial repercussions on the Church’s assets, and a psychological examination of repressed or recovered memory.
Plante, Thomas G., ed. Sin Against the Innocents: Sexual Abuse by Priests and the Role of the Catholic Church. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. A compilation of essays on the sex abuse scandal in the Church from authorities representing a variety of perspectives, including psychologists, a Vatican correspondent, and a former director of a facility that offered treatment to clergy involved in sexual abuse.