Florida — The Statewide Prosecution Report (2020)

The Florida Office of Statewide Prosecution's 2020 report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Florida: 97 priests identified, prosecution barred in every case, and a second list of accused priests the Church relocated to Florida — carried here exactly as the document prints them, with its limits stated.

Issuing office: Office of Statewide Prosecution (Office of the Attorney General, State of Florida), with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — Statewide Prosecutor Nicholas B. Cox
Report: Report on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church in Florida
Released: November 6, 2020
Scope: All seven Florida dioceses; diocesan priests — the investigation did not explore the religious orders, beyond reviewing the Jesuits' published list
Headline figure: 97 priests identified; prosecution of every allegation barred by limitations law or the accused's death
The two lists: List 1: 97 names, each with the printed reason prosecution is impossible · List 2: 80 names as printed (the introduction says 81)
Posture: Allegations reviewed and found unprosecutable (List 1); the report's own 'credibly accused' framing for priests relocated to Florida (List 2). Nothing in either list is a conviction record.

In October 2018, weeks after Pennsylvania’s grand jury report landed, Florida ordered its own statewide investigation. The Office of Statewide Prosecution and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement subpoenaed all seven Florida dioceses, met with each bishop, chancellor, and counsel, reviewed the Canon 487 “Secret Archive” files the dioceses produced, and worked 267 tips. No tip involved current conduct. The report that closed the investigation, issued November 6, 2020, is short — nineteen pages — and its central finding is a closed door: the abuse it documented was real enough to name, and almost entirely beyond the reach of prosecution.

What the report found

The executive summary states the two halves of the finding in one passage. The investigation “did not find any instances indicating children in Florida were currently in immediate danger” of sexual abuse by priests — and it “did identify ninety-seven (97) priests against whom allegations of historical sexual abuse were made,” of whom not one could be prosecuted: “prosecution of those allegations is barred by either the applicable statute of limitations or intervening death of the accused priest.” The same bar covered the Church’s own personnel: “the wrongful actions or inactions of the Church and its personnel in connection with those depraved acts are not prosecutable” either. The Florida legislature’s 2020 reform of the limitations law (HB 199) changed the rules going forward, but, as the report notes, the change “constitutionally cannot retroactively allow prosecution of any alleged perpetrator who may still be alive.” Cases that had already been prosecuted could not be prosecuted again.

The two lists

The report prints two lists, and they do different work.

List 1 — “Alleged Priests in Florida and reason for impossibility of a criminal prosecution” (pages 6–10) names the 97, each with the report’s printed reason: barred by the statute of limitations, deceased, previously prosecuted, and the like. Twelve of the ninety-seven carry a printed reason that includes “previously prosecuted” — the report does not state those cases’ outcomes, and this archive asserts no conviction from the phrase; those entries are flagged in the Directory for a court-record verification pass. The list assigns no diocese to any name.

List 2 — “Credibly Accused Priests Relocated to Florida by the Church” (pages 12–15) is the report’s pattern finding: priests accused elsewhere whom the Church moved into Florida. It alleges no Florida offense by the men it names. One disclosure belongs to the document itself: its introduction says the list holds eighty-one (81) names; eighty are printed. This archive carries the eighty as printed and does not adjust the count.

Two men — Giles Brault and William Burke — are printed on both lists. Across both lists, the report names 175 unique men.

Venice: what the document does and does not say

On the day the report issued, Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice — a diocese that publishes no list of its own — wrote that a list of Venice-incardinated priests accused of substantiated allegations “has been issued by the Statewide Prosecutor,” deferring to this report. Law-firm pages have since reproduced a set of nine names as that Venice set. Because the report assigns no diocese to any name, presence on its lists can verify statewide-list membership only — never Venice incardination. Verified against the printed lists, name by name:

Six of the nine are on List 1: Donald Baier (printed reason: deceased), George Brennan (deceased), Charles Cikovic (previously prosecuted), Neil Flemming (barred by the statute of limitations), Jean Ronald Joseph (barred by the statute of limitations), William Romero (barred by the statute of limitations).
Three of the nine are not in the report as spelled: Anglim does not appear. Bartholomew does not appear — List 2 prints a “Charles Bartles,” a different name. McLoughlin does not appear — the report prints Edward McLaughlin and Nicholas McLaughlin, a different spelling, and this archive does not treat them as a match.

The three absent names are not carried anywhere in this archive on the strength of a law firm’s reproduction. What the State’s own document verifies is the six.

In this archive

The 175 men stand in the Directory at Tier 2, sourced to this report, under a statewide heading that states the report’s own limit — it assigns no diocese. Men the report names who already stood in the Directory on a Florida diocese’s own list keep those entries, annotated with the report’s naming; no duplicates were created. Twelve entries carry the “previously prosecuted” flag described above — verification candidates, nothing more, until a court record says otherwise. The wider record these lists belong to is laid out on The Pattern.

Sources

Office of Statewide Prosecution, Report on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church in Florida, November 6, 2020 — official PDF. The official site refuses automated access; this archive works from the Wayback Machine’s capture of that official PDF, retained locally (SHA-256 8cf13b1ab7236df9c122a0fa0e4e31b0dcb218150d70f857c58c542db982de94), and every name on this page and in the Directory was read from that document — never from coverage or a law-firm list.