Massachusetts joins 25 other governments in suing EPA over power plant rollback

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell joined a coalition of states and cities Thursday in suing the Environmental Protection Agency over its repeal of greenhouse gas limits on existing power plants.

The coalition filed a petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, according to a news release from Campbell’s office. The same day, the group sent the EPA a notice of intent to sue over the agency’s failure to limit pollution from existing gas-fired plants.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin signed the repeal Sept. 14, and it takes effect Nov. 16. The rule strikes carbon-capture requirements for existing coal-fired plants and for new gas turbines that run around the clock, according to the agency’s power plant standards page and Federal Register notice.

Zeldin announced the repeal at a meeting of G20 energy ministers in Houston. He said the administration wants to make sure Americans can “afford to keep the lights on,” NBC News reported. The EPA estimated the repeal would save the power sector $160 billion in compliance costs from 2026 through 2047.

Alongside the repeal, the EPA issued a supplemental proposal asserting that the Clean Air Act gives the agency no authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. If the EPA finalizes it, the proposal would eliminate the remaining federal carbon standards for the sector.

Campbell’s office testified against that proposal Thursday, the same day the EPA held a virtual public hearing on it. Her office said the plan “flouts the law and the science.”

In the lawsuit, the coalition argues that the EPA unlawfully dropped carbon limits without properly weighing alternatives. The states also contend the agency ignored the health and climate costs of leaving existing plants unregulated.

The EPA set standards for new gas plants more than a decade ago but has never limited pollution from existing ones, the coalition said in its notice. Those plants include “peaker” plants that run during periods of high electricity demand. Campbell’s office said such plants often operate in low-income communities and communities of color.

Power plants produce roughly one-quarter of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions, according to the attorney general’s office. Her office said added pollution would bring hotter heat waves and heavier flooding, and would aggravate asthma and heart disease in communities already burdened by pollution.

Campbell also has a pending court challenge to the EPA’s February rescission of the 2009 finding that greenhouse gases from motor vehicles endanger public health and welfare. Environmental and public health groups have filed their own lawsuits over the power plant repeal.

The petitioners in the D.C. Circuit case are the states of New York, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin; Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro; the District of Columbia; the cities of Chicago and New York; and the City and County of Denver. The suit names the EPA and Zeldin as respondents.

Massachusetts man’s $400,000 loss shows how AI powers romance scams

Victims nationwide reported losing $929 million to confidence and romance fraud in 2025, up 38% from $672 million in 2024, according to the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report. Americans 60 and older accounted for $584 million of those losses.

In New England, more than 700 people in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island told the FBI they lost about $20 million to romance scams last year, the bureau’s Boston field office said in February.

Chris Colocousis thought he had checked out the woman who contacted him on Facebook. “Eliza” had a New York phone number and said she worked at a well-known financial firm in Atlanta. On a video call, she looked exactly like her photos.

Colocousis, a divorced Massachusetts man in his 60s, said he lost the $400,000 he “invested” under her guidance, The Associated Press reported in June. He still does not know whether he was talking with a real person or with ChatGPT.

“You just feel like your whole world fell apart,” Colocousis told the AP.

“Fraudsters are lurking online claiming to be looking for love when they’re really just looking to loot your bank account,” Ted E. Docks, special agent in charge of the FBI Boston Division, said in the statement.

Massachusetts residents filed 22,936 internet crime complaints of all types with the FBI in 2025 and reported $410.9 million in losses, the 14th-highest total among states. Residents 60 and older reported $113.9 million of that amount.

AI lets one scammer work many victims

An investigation by the AP and the PBS series “Frontline” found that scam compounds in Myanmar use software built on American artificial intelligence models, chiefly ChatGPT and Gemini. The tools generate automated replies and translate messages into more than 100 languages.

Safeer Mohammed Koorimannil, whom traffickers took to one of those compounds, told the AP that on a typical shift he chatted with more than 100 people across dozens of profiles at the same time. His bosses gave him four days to make each victim fall in love. Records he smuggled out show he targeted some 50,000 people in a single month, the AP reported.

The FBI counted more than $19 million in 2025 confidence and romance fraud losses with a likely AI connection. In a December 2024 public service announcement, the bureau warned that criminals use AI to create realistic images for fake social media profiles in romance schemes and to generate video for real-time video chats.

In a University of Waterloo study released in 2024, 260 participants told real faces from AI-generated ones only 61% of the time, well below the 85% the researchers expected.

Personal data helps scammers pick targets

Data brokers collect and sell personal information that scammers can use to choose victims. In December 2024, then-Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra warned in prepared remarks that “identity thieves and scammers purchase detailed dossiers to target vulnerable consumers, particularly seniors and people in financial distress.”

Romance scammers often build a relationship over time before offering to help victims invest, the Federal Trade Commission said in May. The agency reported that romance scam losses rose 22% in 2025, with a median loss of $2,020 per person.

In January 2025, a man showed up at Colocousis’ home and collected $80,000 in cash that Colocousis believed would unlock his money on a cryptocurrency trading app, the AP reported.

An earlier FTC analysis found that reports of romance-related sextortion grew more than eightfold from 2019 to 2022, with people ages 18 to 29 reporting it most often.

How to protect yourself

The FBI advises people to make social media accounts private and accept followers only from people they know. Limiting the photos and voice recordings people post online also makes it harder for scammers to build fake identities with AI, the bureau said. It also suggests checking images and video for flaws such as distorted hands or lag.

The FBI’s Boston office urges people to move slowly in online relationships and to stay skeptical of anyone who quickly wants to take the conversation off a dating site. It also warns against lending money or sharing financial information with someone met online.

Massachusetts officials offer similar guidance. In a February advisory, the state Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation told residents to watch for suitors who ask for payment in cryptocurrency or gift cards. The office said the attorney general’s office has shut down more than 50 cryptocurrency fraud websites and returned $6 million to Massachusetts consumers.

Residents who suspect a romance scam can call the attorney general’s consumer advocacy hotline at 617-727-8400 or file a complaint with the FBI at ic3.gov. The FBI advises anyone who sent money to contact their bank immediately.

New Poll Finds Voter Support for Auditing the Legislature Holding Steady

by Chris Lisinski, CommonWealth Beacon

There’s been an awful lot of sound and fury from top Democrats when it comes to the long-stalled, voter-approved law empowering the state auditor to give the Legislature a closer look.

They say allowing the auditor to probe the House and Senate would violate the sanctity of the state Constitution, which requires a separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches. They say both chambers already undergo financial audits by outside firms and post the results online. And they say Auditor Diana DiZoglio, a former representative and senator herself, is motivated by personal animus toward her former bosses, rendering her a walking conflict of interest.

Yet all of the headlines and handwringing over the past two years have not moved the needle among voters, not even by a single point.

A new CommonWealth Beacon/MassINC Polling Group survey (Toplines | Crosstabs) found that 72 percent of likely voters support explicitly allowing the state auditor to audit the Legislature — exactly the same share that voted in support of a 2024 ballot question writing that power into state law. Only 7 percent of respondents oppose the law, and 21 percent said they are unsure.

Informed that the support margin in the poll mirrored the 2024 vote, DiZoglio’s first response was to chuckle.

“It’s certainly on theme,” she told CommonWealth Beacon. “We continue to push for the voter-mandated audit that 72 percent voted for, and as the poll demonstrates, that push is not waning. People are just as motivated as they were in 2024.”

Consensus among the electorate has not extended to the House and Senate. For more than a year following the question’s approval, top Democrats in each chamber refused to comply with DiZoglio’s newly empowered outreach, prompting the auditor to sue them earlier this year.

An initial skirmish before the state’s highest court brought little resolution. A case focused on the constitutionality of DiZoglio’s initial request for a limited batch of documents — official legislative budgets, financial audits of the House and Senate, information about the “balance forward” line items used to carry funds into another year, and monetary settlements between the branches and current or former employees — is now pending in Suffolk Superior Court.

In a brief filed in that case, the House’s legal counsel argued that DiZoglio’s January 2025 request infringes on the separation of powers between the branches and violates a section of the state constitution declaring that legislative speech cannot be the target of any legal action. Furthermore, the House’s top attorney contended, the court is not empowered to order the chamber to make any changes.

Meanwhile, the Senate argues that it should not be subject to the lawsuit because its leaders already voted to provide the documents in question to DiZoglio — even while insisting they had no legal obligation to fulfill other audit requests. The House followed up that vote with its own legislation that would limit the scope of any probe by the state auditor’s office, in perpetuity, only to the subset of documents DiZoglio outlined in her very first request.

“The House has long believed that the audit ballot question violates the state constitution – a position that we have held since before the question passed in 2024,” House Speaker Ron Mariano said in a statement to CommonWealth Beacon. “While the House remains opposed to a politically motivated audit conducted in violation of the Constitution, we did pass legislation earlier this year providing the Auditor with the authority to conduct a financial audit of the House, and we continue to undergo an audit conducted by an independent auditing firm every year.”

Gray Milkowski, a spokesperson for Senate President Karen Spilka, noted that the chamber’s latest legislative rules made more information about committee votes available because the Senate “understands that transparency is important to voters.”

“In addition, the Senate continues to put all of its expenditures—including payroll and payments to vendors—online for every resident of the Commonwealth to see and review,” he said.

With implementation in limbo, the law has morphed into a political utility tool. “Where the hell is our audit” or references to “the 72 percent” have become stand-in responses to a whole host of complaints about Beacon Hill, even if addressing such a grievance is not within the scope of a routine audit of one government entity by another.

Republicans, who are outnumbered in the Legislature seven to one, made a point to visibly embrace both the audit law and also DiZoglio herself, the only statewide Democrat who did not draw a GOP challenger this fall.

But among voters, support is massive across different ideologies. For all the complaints top House and Senate Democrats make, 70 percent of Democratic likely voters back the audit law, according to the new CommonWealth Beacon survey. Seventy-nine percent of Republicans support it, as do 72 percent of those not enrolled in either major party.

The poll involved 800 likely voters surveyed between September 14 and September 22. It has a credibility interval of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Voters have another legislative transparency decision to make this fall. DiZoglio and her allies are pushing a new ballot question that would subject the House, Senate, and governor’s office to the state’s public records law, with the auditor pitching it as a natural follow-up to her winning campaign two years ago.

Already, that idea has been caught up in the gears of Beacon Hill. Over the summer, while the ballot question was already well on track to land on the November ballot, both branches approved legislation creating a new public records framework for themselves. Depending on where the final compromise bill lands, it could supersede whatever voters decide at the polls.

DiZoglio suggested she could take legal action if that comes to pass.

“The Legislature, in doing this, is signaling to the voters of this Commonwealth that they do not respect the will of the electorate and that election results don’t matter to them,” she said.

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Worcester Library Director Jason Homer Leaving for Baltimore

WORCESTER, Mass. — Jason Homer, executive director of the Worcester Public Library for nearly six years, will leave to lead the Baltimore County Public Library in Maryland, the Worcester library’s board of directors announced on Thursday, Oct. 1. Homer’s last day in Worcester will be Nov. 6.

Tressa Santillo, the library’s director for library innovation and public services, will serve as interim executive director while the board conducts a national search for a permanent replacement.

“Leaving Worcester Public Library is incredibly bittersweet,” Homer said in a statement released by the library. “There is no way to adequately express what this community and this library have meant to me.”

He credited the library’s staff for the changes made during his tenure.

“I am proud of what we have accomplished together,” Homer said. “But I am even more proud of the people who made it happen.”

Under Homer, the library created a Community Resources Department that pairs social work with library services. The department connects residents with help on housing, food insecurity, health, immigration, re-entry, veterans’ services and English-language learning, according to the board.

The library also expanded its digital equity and accessibility programs and adopted a new strategic plan, called the Purpose, Ambition and Strategic Roadmap. It introduced a “You Belong Here” brand during the same period.

The library and its staff collected several national and international honors while Homer led it. Those include the American Library Association’s John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions PressReader International Library Marketing Award. Staff members were named Library Journal Movers & Shakers, and the Worcester Talking Book Library was named the 2026 National Library Service Subregional Library of the Year.

The library was also a finalist for the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Individual staff and board members received the Worcester Regional Research Bureau’s Thomas S. Green Public Service Award, the YWCA’s Katharine F. Erskine Award and recognition from the Massachusetts Library Association, the board said.

“For Jason, leadership has always been about people,” said Stephanie Pasha, president of the library’s board of directors. “He has challenged us to think bigger about what a public library can be, while making sure that the people doing the work had the support, encouragement and opportunities to make that vision a reality.”

Pasha said that the library is in a strong position for the transition.

“Jason leaves WPL stronger than he found it,” she said. “We are incredibly grateful for his leadership and excited about what comes next.”

The board said the search will focus on candidates who can build on the library’s strategic direction, staff, and community partnerships. It did not announce a timeline for naming a permanent director.

The library will hold a public farewell celebration for Homer from 5 to 7 p.m. Oct. 27 at the Main Library, 3 Salem Square. Staff, volunteers, partners and residents are invited to attend and meet the leaders who will guide the library during the transition.

“I will miss Worcester enormously,” Homer said. “But I leave knowing that WPL is ready for what comes next.”

Worcester Man Indicted After Decades Living as Dead Citizen

WORCESTER — A federal grand jury has indicted a Worcester man known only as “John Doe” on charges he spent more than two decades living under a dead U.S. citizen’s identity, using it to obtain food assistance, state health benefits and a Massachusetts ID card, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.

The man’s true identity remains unknown. He is charged with unlawfully obtaining Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, false representation of a Social Security number, making false statements related to health care matters, and aggravated identity theft. He was previously arrested in April 2026 after being charged by criminal complaint and remains in federal custody.

According to charging documents, the man has lived in Massachusetts since at least 2001 under the identity of a U.S. citizen from Puerto Rico who died in 2006. Prosecutors allege he used that identity to fraudulently obtain a Massachusetts identification card and MassHealth benefits.

Charging documents also allege the man has criminal convictions in Massachusetts under the deceased citizen’s identity, including for assault and drug trafficking. In September 2012, he was convicted in Worcester Superior Court of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, a gun, and of trafficking cocaine, for which he was sentenced to 8 to 10 years and 11 to 15 years in state prison, respectively.

After his release from prison in January 2022, the man allegedly used the stolen identity to apply for SNAP benefits. According to charging documents, he spoke with an employee of the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance in April 2022 as part of his application, claiming he was the individual named on the application, that he was a U.S. citizen, and verifying the Social Security number tied to that identity.

The DTA employee noted in the file: “Death match ??? – reviewing with supervisor,” apparently flagging that the Social Security number corresponded to a deceased person. The application was nonetheless approved, and the man went on to collect SNAP benefits, prosecutors allege.

In total, from April 2022 through February 2026, the man allegedly applied for and obtained approximately $12,623 in SNAP benefits under the stolen identity.

• The charge of unlawfully obtaining SNAP benefits provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.
• The charge of misrepresenting a Social Security number provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.
• The charge of false statements relating to health care matters provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, up to three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000.
• The charge of aggravated identity theft provides for a sentence of at least two years in prison, up to one year of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000

Mass. AG Releases Report of Abuse in Worcester Diocese

WORCESTER — A state investigation found that at least 90 clergy members abused 216 children within the Worcester Diocese over more than six decades and identified the diocese as the only one in Massachusetts that still refuses to publicly release a list of clergy credibly accused of child sexual abuse, according to a report Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office released Tuesday, Sept. 30.

The report is the product of a criminal investigation into the Dioceses of Fall River, Springfield and Worcester that then-Attorney General Maura Healey opened in 2019. Investigators documented 944 survivors of clergy sexual abuse across the three dioceses combined, tied to 275 accused clergy. The report says the true number is likely higher given chronic under-reporting.

“For decades, survivors of clergy sexual abuse, including those who are no longer alive, have carried the devastating consequences of abuse, while the institutions entrusted with their care too often failed to protect them,” Campbell said in a statement. “While important reforms have been made, the report documents decades of failures by diocesan leaders to adequately respond to allegations of child sexual abuse and protect children from further harm.”

Campbell’s office said it cannot bring criminal charges over the misconduct it documented. Most of it occurred before Massachusetts extended the relevant statutes of limitations and made clergy mandated reporters of abuse in 2002, and many of the accused are now dead.

Scope of the Misconduct

Investigators cautioned that the full scale of clergy abuse in the three dioceses cannot be precisely determined, given decades of underreporting by victims and poor diocesan recordkeeping. The numbers below reflect all allegations reviewed by investigators — including those against bishops, priests, religious brothers, deacons and nuns — regardless of whether the dioceses themselves deemed the underlying allegations credible.

Worcester. The Worcester Diocese had 90 accused clergy tied to 216 survivors. The diocese was home to the House of Affirmation, a Whitinsville treatment center for accused priests that one victim said also served as the site of a child sex ring involving clergy connected to the center.

Fall River. The Fall River Diocese had the highest survivor count of the three, with 92 accused clergy tied to 469 survivors. The diocese was home to one of the state’s most notorious cases: former priest James Porter, who was ultimately accused of molesting hundreds of children and criminally convicted of abusing more than two dozen.

Springfield. The Springfield Diocese had 93 accused clergy tied to 259 survivors — the highest number of accused clergy among the three dioceses. Two of its own bishops, Christopher Weldon and Thomas Dupre, who together led the diocese for 36 years, appear on the diocese’s own list of clergy credibly accused of raping children. Dupre was indicted by a grand jury in 2004, though prosecutors later determined the statute of limitations had expired.

Pre-2002 Response

Investigators found that for decades — and especially before 2002, when the Boston Globe’s reporting on the Archdiocese of Boston triggered national reforms, church officials in all three dioceses knew about abuse but did not take effective action to stop it. The report describes a culture in which priests commanded such deep community trust and reverence that families often protected accused clergy rather than their own children, and in which reports of abuse that reached a supervising priest frequently went no further up the chain.

In one Worcester Diocese case described in the report, a mother learned in the late 1970s that her daughter had been abused by a parish priest, confronted him directly and reported him to his supervisor. The supervisor never informed the bishop and instead let the priest continue working at the parish, where he had a reputation as an effective fundraiser. The priest abused at least six other girls in the same parish. Investigators found he ultimately abused well over 50 girls, some as young as 4, over 16 years.

The AG’s report does not name the priest, but the pattern it describes Robert E. Kelley, a former priest at St. Cecilia’s Parish in Leominster. News reports said Kelley “twice convicted of raping young girls in the 1970s and 1980s,” and whom the survivor law firm Herman Law says “admitted to sexually abusing between 50 and 100 girls” during his time at that parish alone.

Much of the Worcester Diocese’s historical abuse traced back to the House of Affirmation, a treatment center in Whitinsville that operated from 1973 to 1989 and meant to evaluate and counsel priests, including those suspected of sexual abuse.

The report found that the center was co-founded by a Worcester priest later accused of abuse himself, and that priests sent there for treatment were often returned to ministry, where some continued to abuse children.

This reference appears to be to House of Affirmation’s founder and former Worcester priest Thomas A. Kane. Kane was removed from ministry in 1993 after being accused of sexually abusing a boy over several years starting when the boy was 9. The Telegram & Gazette reported that Bishop Timothy J. Harrington removed Kane in 1993 “for sexual misconduct that occurred in the 1970s,” and that Pope Benedict XVI later accepted his voluntary laicization.

According to one victim’s account, several priests connected to the center participated in a child sex ring. One West Virginia priest sent to the center in 1978 returned to a Northborough parish, where he abused more than a dozen more children over roughly two years before his conduct came to light.

This appears to be a reference to Victor Frobas, a priest from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, sent to the House of Affirmation for treatment in 1977 and then assigned to St. Rose of Lima Parish in Northborough from 1978 to 1979. A Worcester County grand jury indicted Frobas on charges, but he died on July 11, 1993, before he could stand trial.

Investigators also found that some Massachusetts law enforcement and prosecutors deferred to the church during this period. In one instance, a Fall River Diocese priest found in a parked car with a teenage boy in 1963 was released from police custody without being booked after his pastor arrived.

Post-2002 Response

The Dallas Charter, adopted by U.S. bishops in June 2002 following the Globe’s reporting, required dioceses to establish lay-majority review boards, adopt zero-tolerance policies for substantiated abuse, and conduct background checks on clergy, employees and volunteers. Massachusetts also passed reforms that year criminalizing reckless endangerment of children and expanding the definition of mandated reporters to include clergy. All three dioceses adopted new policies in response, though investigators found their implementation and rigor have varied.

Worcester. The Worcester Diocese established its Office of Healing and Prevention and a Victim Assistance Coordinator in 2002. It created a Diocesan Review Committee, composed of seven diocesan clergy and employees and 11 laypeople, including a psychologist, a retired state police officer and a judge. The review committee is to assess allegations and advise the bishop. The diocese requires criminal background checks every five years and mandatory abuse-prevention training for clergy, employees, and volunteers.

However, investigators found the diocese will not take formal action against an accused priest, or report an allegation to prosecutors, until a victim provides a full written disclosure. The diocese said it changed the policy in 2013 but that investigators found it being followed as recently as 2019. The Worcester Diocese’s current child protection policies span 14 pages, and its Code of Ministerial Conduct was last revised in 2021.

Fall River. The Fall River Diocese underwent a significant overhaul of its policies beginning in 2020, reconstituting its review board as the Ministerial Review Board and engaging a third-party investigation firm. The diocese now conducts background checks every three years and requires safe-environment training every three years, recently shortened from six.

Investigators found the diocese’s code of conduct is difficult for the public to locate on its website, and that until the 2020 changes, the diocese’s Review Board did not hear allegations against retired priests or, until as recently as 2022, resigned priests — allowing some cases to bypass formal review entirely.

Springfield. The Springfield Diocese first adopted a child protection policy in 2003 but did not revise it between 2013 and 2025 — a 12-year gap. Reforms accelerated after 2019, when the diocese commissioned an outside investigation by a retired judge into its handling of abuse allegations against former Bishop Weldon.

That investigation found the allegations “unequivocally credible” and found the diocese’s complaint process “lacking.” A subsequent task force and oversight committee developed a three-year reform plan. The diocese’s review board has nine seats, and investigators found no violations of Massachusetts’ mandatory reporting law, though the diocese has declined to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Attorney General’s Office that it entered into with three district attorneys’ offices in 2020.

Criticisms of Post-2002 Response

Despite the reforms, investigators identified ongoing failures across all three dioceses in supervising accused priests, investigating complaints promptly, and maintaining transparency with the public.

The report found that the Worcester and Fall River dioceses repeatedly allowed accused priests to retire or resign rather than face formal review, letting them keep the appearance — and many times the pay and benefits — of priests in good standing for years or decades.

In one Worcester case, a priest accused of abuse in the early 1980s was reassigned to three more parishes despite the bishop’s promise to the victim’s mother that he would never again have contact with children. He was not removed from ministry until 2002 and was permitted to retire in 2003, continuing to draw diocesan compensation until his death in 2018.

By the end of 2002, the Worcester Diocese was aware of priests with pending abuse allegations against them; several were eventually permitted to retire. Only 11 were permanently removed from the priesthood.

In a separate case, the Worcester Diocese’s Judicial Vicar publicly announced in 2003 that the diocese was moving forward with canonical trials for six accused priests, saying justice had been “delayed” too long. Two of those priests retired that same year, and a third resigned, with no evidence of a formal determination ever made. Only two were eventually permanently removed, in 2018 and 2020.

The diocese continued receiving new allegations against five of the six priests in the years that followed but never made those allegations public, according to the report.

The Fall River Diocese’s Credibly Accused List includes 50 diocesan priests, with 33 of them now deceased. Investigators found the diocese was aware by the end of 2002 of 18 living priests with pending abuse allegations; one was permitted to retire in 2015, and five were later removed.

In some cases, the diocese failed to respond to the Vatican’s own requests for additional information for years, and the Vatican eventually closed the case without action.

Survivors’ Experiences

Investigators said many survivors did not come forward until decades after their abuse, a pattern well documented in research on child sexual abuse disclosure — one study cited in the report found survivors disclosed at an average age of 52. Reasons cited by survivors interviewed for the report included fear of not being believed, shame, a desire to protect their parents, and the relief that came only after an abuser died.

Delayed and partial disclosures sometimes limited the support survivors received. Members of the Worcester Diocese’s Diocesan Review Committee told investigators that survivors often make an initial oral report but do not follow up with a full written disclosure, sometimes for years The diocese will not take formal action or notify prosecutors without one.

Even survivors who disclosed abuse immediately did not always see it stopped.

In one case described in the report, a boy in Worcester in the mid-1980s disclosed abuse by a religious education teacher in confession. Instead of reporting it, the priest hearing the confession began abusing the boy himself and continued for three to four years.

In another, a survivor reported his abuse by a Worcester priest to the bishop in 1994. The priest received a transfer to another parish and remained in active ministry until 2002.

Some disclosures led to swift consequences. In one case, a teenage survivor’s disclosure to a state prisoner during a school trip led to a Worcester priest’s first criminal conviction in 1990.

Credibly Accused List

Investigators’ central recommendation for the Worcester Diocese is that it publish a public list of credibly accused clergy — something every other diocese in Massachusetts has already done. The report found Worcester is one of just 12 Catholic dioceses nationwide, out of hundreds, that has not published such a list, even though more than 90% of dioceses nationally have done so.

The Worcester Diocese has instead shared the names of credibly accused priests privately with the Worcester County District Attorney’s Office since 2002 and disclosed individual cases on a case-by-case basis through its website and diocesan newspaper, the Catholic Free Press. Investigators found that practice leaves victims and the public with no way to systematically search for a particular abuser’s name, and said publishing a full list would validate survivors, encourage others to come forward, and help ensure offending priests do not quietly remain connected to their communities.

The Fall River and Springfield dioceses published their own lists in 2021, though investigators found both could be improved. In Fall River, at least one survivor’s abuser was left off the diocese’s list because the diocese said it could not find a document in which its review board specifically used the word “credible” to describe her case. In Springfield, which first published a partial list in 2011 and expanded it in 2021, Bishop William Byrne said at the time that “public acknowledgement of those credible allegations is a critically important action that the diocese owes to those survivors who have so courageously stepped forward.”

Fitchburg Man Pleads Guilty to Distributing Child Pornography

ORCESTER — A local man pleaded guilty Tuesday, Sept. 30, in federal court to distributing and possessing child sexual abuse material he sent through the messaging app Kik, federal prosecutors said.

Sean Pettigrew, 50, of Fitchburg, pleaded guilty to one count of distribution and one count of possession of child pornography. U.S. District Court Judge Margaret R. Guzman set sentencing for Jan. 21, 2027.

Pettigrew was identified in April 2025 as a member of a Kik Messenger group devoted to child sexual abuse, according to prosecutors. He sent images depicting the abuse in private messages to an undercover agent posing as a group member, and a subsequent search of his account found he had sent additional files to other users on the app, prosecutors said. He was arrested in July 2025 and had been held pending trial.

The charge of distribution of child pornography provides for a sentence of no less than five years up to 20 years in prison, at least five years and up to a lifetime of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000.

The charge of possession of child pornography provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, at least five years and up to a lifetime of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000.

Poll Shows Voters on Track to Retain legal Cannabis and 2024 Gun Law

by Jennifer Smith, CommonWealth Beacon
September 29, 2026

Massachusetts voters look like they’ve largely made up their minds on two of the highest-profile questions on the November ballot. They seem on track to retain legalized recreational marijuana and a sweeping new gun law passed in 2024, according to a new poll.

In a MassINC Polling Group survey (Toplines | Crosstabs) for CommonWealth Beacon, attitudes toward the other seven ballot questions were more mixed, with percentages of likely voters saying they expect to vote yes hovering in the high 40s and low 50s.

But the two final questions on the ballot are bucking that trend. Sixty-one percent of likely voters said they would vote no on Question 8, which if approved would end legal sales of recreational marijuana and create civil penalties for possessing more than a small amount of recreational cannabis. Twenty-seven percent of respondents said they would vote yes.

Question 9, a referendum on whether to keep the state’s sweeping 2024 firearms law, looks set for a resounding affirmation of the law, with 70 percent of respondents saying they would vote to keep it and 18 percent saying they would repeal it.

These two are also the questions voters seem most sure about, with just 11 percent of voters undecided on each. That is the lowest undecided share of any of the nine questions on the ballot.

“People don’t want to go backwards on these two things,” said Steve Koczela, president of the MassINC Polling Group.

“They might not love the Legislature,” Koczela said of voters, pointing to their strong support two years ago for a ballot question to audit lawmakers. “But they approve of what the Legislature did on firearms, at least.”

The survey of 800 likely voters was conducted online September 14 through 22. It has a credibility interval of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Question 1, which would apply the public records law to the Legislature and governor’s office, has the support of 63 percent of respondents with 14 percent opposed. That’s lower than the support seen in a UMass Amherst/WCVB poll in August, which found 84 percent support for the measure with just 7 percent opposed.

The public records question is considered a natural heir to state Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s successful ballot push last cycle to allow her office to audit the Legislature. That audit attempt, which the Legislature has vocally resisted, is stuck in a political and legal morass at the moment.

The CommonWealth Beacon survey asked voters to name their top issues at the ballot box in their own words. When the polling group reviewed those answers, guns and marijuana were the only ballot questions people cited as reasons to get out and vote.

“Those are your two marquee ones that were actually drawing people out,” said MPG vice president Rich Parr.

In 2016, nearly 54 percent of voters approved legalizing recreational marijuana. A decade later, they are being asked to become the first state to dismantle the market. The repeal campaign is led by the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts and is backed by the national anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which is funding a similar effort in Maine.

The ballot question would still allow adults 21 and older to possess up to one ounce of pot without criminal penalty, and it would leave the state’s medical marijuana law in place.

Question 9 is a veto referendum, a mechanism that lets voters decide whether to keep a law the Legislature has already passed. The 2024 law cracked down on ghost guns and 3-D printed guns, strengthened the state’s red flag law, and expanded the definition of assault weapons, among other changes. Gun rights groups gathered enough signatures to force a referendum but missed the window for the 2024 ballot.

Most of the other seven questions still lean toward a win, but by less, and with 20 to 25 percent of voters still undecided. That puts them in “kind of a gray area where it really could move,” said Parr.

Question 6, which would create a conservation fund that would still depend on legislative appropriation, has 56 percent support to 24 percent opposition.

Four questions failed to crack 50 percent support in the poll, or just made it over that line, which public opinion experts and ballot question veterans agree leaves the campaigns on shaky ground.

“It’s different than a candidate poll where the margin is the best predictor,” Koczela said. In ballot questions, “the yes percent tends to be the best predictor. And if you have a yes percent that’s right around 50, then you’re watching nervously.” What’s more, pollsters generally expect undecided voters on ballot questions to break toward the status quo.

Most of the ballot campaign money tends to be spent between Labor Day and Election Day, Koczela noted, and “you do kind of see support move the most just in the last eight to 10 weeks.”

On Question 4, allowing Election Day voter registration, yes holds the lead, 53 percent to 33 percent. Question 7, which lowers the lot size requirements to build single-family homes, has support at 51 percent and opposition at 24 percent.

Question 2, letting Committee for Public Counsel Services employees unionize, fell below half support, with yes in the lead, 48 percent to 25 percent. Question 5, rewriting the state’s revenue cap, is also narrowly below majority support, with 47 percent in favor and 26 percent opposed.

Apart from the two repeal efforts, Question 3 to create all-party primaries looks most endangered, even as the margin stays close. It had the support of 43 percent of likely voters, with 36 percent opposed and 20 percent undecided.

Despite the record-tying number of questions, and the irritation from Beacon Hill with advocates doing an end-run around the usual legislative process, voters aren’t eager to hand over their direct democracy leverage.

More than three-quarters of respondents said “it is a good thing for the voters to decide these issues” and just 15 percent said lawmakers should be deciding more of them.

With nine questions on the ballot, the pollsters said the usual rules may not apply. Campaigns will compete with one another for attention, which could blunt opposition spending.

“The numbers may be more sticky than they usually are,” Koczela said. “Or some of these undecideds might just not have heard about the ballot question and might be very persuadable.”

Many of those undecided voters face unfamiliar subjects, he noted.

“Some of these are esoteric issues,” Koczela said. ”They’re not all things like marijuana legalization.”

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Two Worcester County Firms Part of $40M Life Sciences Awards

WORCESTER — Two Worcester County companies were among 38 life sciences firms statewide sharing nearly $40 million in tax incentives Gov. Maura Healey announced Tuesday, Sept. 22, a round expected to create 1,644 jobs across Massachusetts.

• Eyepoint Inc., which is expanding in Northbridge, received $1,000,000 tied to a commitment of 40 new jobs.
• Rentschler Biopharma Inc., expanding in Milford, received $517,500 for 23 jobs.

Healey announced the full round of awards at SMC Ltd.’s facility in Devens, alongside Economic Development Secretary Eric Paley and Massachusetts Life Sciences Center Interim CEO Liz Graham. The awards were made through the center’s Tax Incentive Program, which supports companies expanding research, development and manufacturing operations in the state. Of the 38 companies receiving awards, 31 are expanding outside Boston and Cambridge and account for 71% of the new jobs expected from this round, according to the state.

“Massachusetts leads the world in life sciences because we invest in the people and companies that are creating the jobs, treatments and technologies of the future,” Healey said in a statement.

Since the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center was established, companies participating in the tax incentive program have committed to creating more than 22,300 jobs, according to the state. In November 2024, Healey signed the Mass Leads Act, which raised the statutory cap on the program from $30 million to $40 million and made other changes intended to strengthen it.

Recipients are required to maintain their job commitments over a three-year period and must file regular reports documenting jobs created. The program is jointly administered by the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center and the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, which handles its technical administration.

The remaining 36 companies receiving awards in this round, all outside Worcester County, are listed below.

Pulse Magazine Founder and Political Advisor Paul Giorgio Dies at 75

WORCESTER, Mass. — Paul Giorgio, a Worcester publisher who once advanced overseas trips for Vice President Al Gore and later built a pair of magazines devoted to the city’s arts and LGBTQ+ communities, died Saturday, Sept. 26. He was 75.

Giorgio died surrounded by loved ones, according to his obituary from Mercadante Funeral Home & Chapel.

His partner of 48 years, Bernard Whitmore, described their lives as closely bound. “Like most spousal relationships, everything we did was intertwined,” Whitmore told MassLive. “He was my gateway to Worcester.”

Born in Worcester to the late Joseph F. and Rose (Arena) Giorgio, he graduated from North High School. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from what was then Assumption College and a master’s degree in criminal justice from Clark University.

Giorgio’s political work took him to Washington, where he served on the White House staff organizing international travel for Gore and helped plan events for the 52nd presidential inauguration, according to the obituary. He was also a member of the Democratic State Committee.

After returning to Worcester, he became president of Pagio Inc. and held business and real estate interests in the city. He chaired the board of the Worcester County Food Bank and sat on the board of the Worcester Business Development Corp. He also served with the Worcester Housing Authority and helped found the Shrewsbury Street Merchants Association.

Giorgio created Pulse Magazine, which spent more than two decades covering Worcester’s arts, entertainment and dining scene. He later launched Central Mass Pride magazine to serve the region’s LGBTQ+ readers. He recently sold both titles to Merit House Media, a Worcester company backed by Rucker Investments, according to the Worcester Business Journal. The Beverly-based investment firm is run by Worcester Railers owner Cliff Rucker and his wife, Susan.

Mayor Joseph Petty paid tribute in a social media post, calling Giorgio a dedicated public servant. “His commitment to our city, his generosity toward others, and his love for this community will not be forgotten,” Petty wrote.

Former Worcester Mayor Konstantina Lukes, writing on the funeral home’s tribute page, said she met Giorgio 40 years ago and called his political advice invaluable. “It will be a long time, if ever, that a political force like Paul’s will emerge on the political landscape,” she wrote.

In addition to Whitmore, Giorgio is survived by his brother Ronald Giorgio and Ronald’s wife, Dolores, of Shrewsbury; a nephew, Michael Giorgio; and a niece, Alexandra Kelly, her husband, Tim, and their children, Jack, Evelyn and Luke.

Calling hours will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2, at Mercadante Funeral Home & Chapel, 370 Plantation St. A celebration of life will follow at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, at the funeral home. Burial beside his parents in St. John Cemetery will be private.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the Central Mass Housing Alliance, 18 Chestnut St., Worcester, MA 01608, or online at cmhaonline.org/donate.

It is with great sadness that I share the passing of my longtime friend, Paul Giorgio.

Paul was a proud lifelong Worcester resident who dedicated so much of his life to our city and to the Democratic Party. He was a tireless campaign worker, a member of the Democratic City and… pic.twitter.com/tyLLnihX2k

— Joe Petty (@MayorJoePetty) September 27, 2026

Image courtesy of Mercadante Funeral Home & Chapel.