He was reassigned to several parish posts involving interaction with children, even after receiving treatment for pedophilia. The investigation and prosecution of Geoghan were one of the numerous cases of priests accused of child sexual abuse in a scandal that rocked the archdiocese in the s and s.
Law lost the support of fellow clergy and the laity after it was shown that his response to allegations against dozens of priests consisted of assigning them to different parishes, thus allowing sexual abuse of additional children to take place. Geoghan was convicted of sexual abuse, laicized , and sentenced in to nine to ten years in Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center , a maximum security prison.
Less than a year later, he was murdered there by Joseph Druce , an inmate serving a life sentence. The Boston Globe ' s coverage of Geoghan's abuse opened the door for public knowledge of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Boston [ 2 ] and Catholic churches nationwide in general. This coverage is a key plot element of Tom McCarthy 's film Spotlight He lost his father when he was only five years old, and was subsequently raised by his maternal uncle, Mark Keohane, who was a Catholic priest within the archdiocese of Boston.
Geoghan attended local parochial schools. Intending to become a priest after his father's death, he attended Cardinal O'Connell Seminary. An assessment in noted him as having a "very pronounced immaturity". Benzevich would later deny this allegation. In , Benzevich told reporters he was branded as a troublemaker for reporting Geoghan, and that church officials hinted that he might be sent to Peru if he persisted. Geoghan was assigned to St. Bernard's Parish in Concord starting on September 22, He was transferred after seven months there; church records offered no explanation for his reassignment.
Paul's Parish in Hingham. Around , a man complained to church authorities that he had caught Geoghan molesting his son. As a result, Geoghan was sent to the Seton Institute in Baltimore , Maryland , for treatment for his pedophilia. In the early s, parishioner Joanne Mueller accused Geoghan of molesting her four young sons. Mueller has said that she informed Paul E. Miceli and he asked her to keep quiet. Miceli disputes her account.
