An ‘Old Boy’s Network’: Groundbreaking Report Exposes Decades of Catholic Clergy Abuse and Ongoing Protection of Abusers

PUBLISHED 10/14/2026 by and

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell released a 203-page report on Sept. 30 showing more than 270 Catholic priests abused at least 1,000 children over several decades in the dioceses of Fall River, Springfield and Worcester.

The report focuses on how church leadership, including bishops, perpetuated this abuse by failing to report crimes to the police, obstructing investigations into these crimes and repeatedly reassigning perpetrators to new parishes, where they abused even more children. The report also details the ways current Catholic leadership continues to circumvent policies and procedures designed to protect children.

“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,” said AG Campbell. “This report provides for the first time a public accounting of the unimaginable harms afflicted on children in the Fall River, Springfield and Worcester dioceses.”

This report is the latest of many revealing widespread clergy sexual abuse and institutional coverups in the Catholic Church and other male-dominated patriarchal religions.

The Massachusetts attorney general’s report catalogs testimony from several survivors of abuse, including Frank Fitzpatrick, who was repeatedly gang-raped by James Porter and other priests beginning when he was a 9-year-old altar boy.

“I am that boy. I carry him with me, always,” wrote Fitzpatrick. “He took your violence, you shameful enablers who do nothing but cover up and perpetuate the cycle of systemic abuse. You call yourselves representatives of God. God has no place in anything you stand for. God is safety; God is nurturing; God is protection; God is Love.”

Is the Cornell Rape Case a Turning Point for Men?

PUBLISHED 10/14/2026 by

What allegedly took place at Cornell was a preventable tragedy. One young man with the guts to say, “This is wrong!” might have stopped it from happening.

It’s a crying shame that didn’t happen. But a silver lining in this sorry tale is that a growing number of men seem to grasp that their silence has contributed to the problem.

Programming with boys and young men should go beyond awareness-raising and behavior-change messaging, to address the gender norms, power relations and social structures that sustain violence.

This means giving young men the opportunity to talk with each other, as well as with their female peers, about what it means to be a man.

This means allowing them to ask and answer the following sorts of questions:

—If you’re a guy, what does it mean to be one of the guys?
—Are you willing to compromise your values for the sake of fitting in?
—What is the price of being part of the brotherhood?
—Is other men’s approval more important than treating women with respect and dignity?

Keeping Score: Women Marines Pass Tougher Fitness Standards; Congressional Candidate Hopes Rape Survivors ‘Have the Baby’; Sotomayor Questions Colleagues’ Understanding of First Amendment

PUBLISHED 10/14/2026 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too, in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—”That is my greatest fear: that people don’t understand our system of government. They don’t understand what the First Amendment means. Some of my colleagues don’t either, by the way. And I’m not joking about that,” said Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
—A congressional candidate hopes rape survivors “have the baby.”
—Almost 70 percent of American women have experienced sexual violence, and 61 percent reported intimate partner violence (IPV).
—California passes new law finally banning child marriage.
—Mothers of young children remain dramatically underrepresented in government: Only 7.2 percent of Congress members are moms with minor children, compared to 18 percent of the adult population.
—Harvey Weinstein is resentenced to 15 years in prison in New York.
—Amazon accused of discriminating against pregnant employees using reasonable accommodations or medical leave.
—Public pressure led a district attorney to reopen cases against the “Cornell 7” fraternity members accused of gang raping a fellow student.
—Trump flip-flops opinion on mail voting ahead of the November election.
—Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear calls for Democrats to be a “party of compassion and empathy” towards trans students.

… and more.

New Poll: Four in Five Voters Fear Their Rights Are Being Taken Away. They’re Also Determined to Vote.

PUBLISHED 10/14/2026 by

Voters are increasingly concerned about threats to their rights, democracy and the 2026 elections, a new national poll from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights shows.

The 2026 Civil Rights Monitor found 82 percent of voters are concerned that rights and freedoms are being taken away or rolled back—the highest level recorded in the five-year history of the poll.

After a Long Campaign, California Finally Banned Child Marriage. Survivors Made It Happen.

PUBLISHED 10/14/2026 by

I grew up around women who were wed while they were still children. My grandmother was married at just 10 years old and my aunt at 16. At school, friends of mine married. I watched their schooling stop, pregnancies that came too soon, choices made for them rather than by them. Relatives would ask, gently but pointedly, when I intended to do the same, as though delaying it only put off something inevitable.

What haunted me then still haunts me now is how ordinary everyone around us made it seem.

That ordinariness is how child marriage has survived for so long in the United States. California has now banned it.

On Sept. 30, Governor Gavin Newsom signed bill AB 1267, setting 18 as the minimum age for marriage with no exceptions.

California has just shown that what was once treated as ordinary does not have to remain inevitable. Eighteen states have now drawn a clear line.The rest of the country should follow. No child’s right to safety, freedom and a future of their own choosing should depend on the state in which they happens to live.

Where Are Men’s Voices in the Conversation About Jane Doe and the Cornell 7?

PUBLISHED 10/13/2026 by

Imagine a 4-year-old boy scraping his knee and starting to cry. What if his caregiver scolded, “Big boys don’t cry.” It still happens.

We must intervene before boys get the message to toughen up and harden their hearts.

Cornell fraternity men were once 4 years old. What were they taught about expressing their feelings, about bullies, about respecting girls—and themselves?

We spend billions responding to men’s violence and almost nothing studying where it starts.

Former Arkansas Farmer Hallie Shoffner Lost Her Family Farm. Now She’s Running to Unseat Sen. Tom Cotton.

PUBLISHED 10/13/2026 by

Hallie Shoffner grew up in the Arkansas Delta, left to earn a bachelor’s degree at Vanderbilt, then came home to become a farmer. She followed her parents into a business that had been in the family for 150 years.

In 2025, she was forced to close the farm.

Now Shoffner, 38, is the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, mounting a long-shot bid to unseat two-term Republican Tom Cotton. Her experience in agriculture is central to a campaign focused on rural economic distress and on her argument that federal policy is failing families like hers.

Why Women Need a Hormonal Bill of Rights

PUBLISHED 10/12/2026 by

For too long, midlife symptoms of women have been minimized; our concerns dismissed, our suffering normalized and our voices overlooked. We reject the notion that hormonal decline is simply something to endure.

Everyone has the right to connection, support, shared knowledge, honest conversation free from shame and community in search of quality of life.

To ask questions.
To demand answers.
To require equal research.
To expect better healthcare.
To defy patriarchal control.
To hormonally radicalize the world.

Before You Vote, Know Where Your Candidates Stand on Abortion (and the Economy and Healthcare and Education and Immigration and…)

PUBLISHED 10/12/2026 by and

A candidate for the U.S. House in Florida and the hosts of an antiabortion podcast recently debated whether abortion bans should include exceptions for rape and incest. The candidate said he hoped people in those circumstances would choose “to have the baby” and allow God to take a crime and make “something incredible” out of it.

Voters have the right to know their candidates’ beliefs on abortion and reproductive healthcare access. Would they protect access to abortion when a pregnancy threatens a patient’s life? What about a pregnancy resulting from rape? Would they support federal restrictions or protect access to care?

Guides.vote produces nonpartisan voter guides with the help of experienced editors, researchers and veteran journalists. The guides provide information about candidates’ positions on issues and are designed to help voters compare candidates before casting their ballots. They also link to sources, so readers can learn more about the statements and records behind the comparisons.

The Cornell Rape Case Has Sparked a National Outcry. Can That Anger Shape the Midterms?

PUBLISHED 10/12/2026 by

A dam has broken for women, stemming from the case of the Cornell student who was allegedly gang-raped at a fraternity in 2024.

In the 1980s, Ms. published the first national study of sexual assault on college campuses. What our researchers found was, at the time, shocking—at least, to the college administrators: Over half of women surveyed had experienced “some form of sexual victimization,” and one in eight women had been victims of rape—though of those women, nearly three-quarters didn’t identify their experience as rape.

“The details of what happened to Jane Doe are horrifying, but at least they are now being reported and considered credible. This has not always been the case,” wrote Ellen Sweet, former Ms. magazine editor and coordinator of the Ms. Magazine Campus Project on Sexual Assault in a recent New York Times letter to the editor. “Now there is a public outcry for transparency and accountability that can’t be ignored. Let’s hope colleges and law enforcement finally learn their lesson.”

We know that in this moment, young women are fed up and deeply, deeply angry. The midterms offer an opportunity to channel that anger into tangible, meaningful change.