James Porter

James Porter (January 2, 1935 – February 11, 2005) was a Roman Catholic ex-priest who was convicted of molesting 28 children; he admitted to sexually abusing at least 100 children of both sexes over a period of 30 years, starting in the 1960s. Early life Porter started both training for the priesthood and molesting children at a young age; he abused his earliest known victim in 1953, the summer before he entered seminary. He was ordained in 1959 and became a priest of the diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. Crimes Porter was assigned to St. Mary's parochial grammar school in North Attleboro, Massachusetts in April 1960 and put in charge of the altar boys. Porter gained a reputation there as a child molester, but no action was taken against him by the Catholic Church until 1963, by which time at least four parents had complained to his superiors about his inappropriate behavior. Rather than contact the police, however, Church officials moved Porter to a parish in Fall River, where further complaints about his behavior surfaced. In the early 1960s, Porter abused more than 60 North Attleboro children, and nearly 100 in southeastern Massachusetts. In 1964, Porter was arrested for molesting a 13-year-old boy and sent to a mental institution for 13 months. Once released, he was quickly reassigned to another parish, the first of many such reassignments over the years. He was shuffled into two more parishes before more accusations piled up and he was hospitalized again in 1967, this time to a hospital run by fellow priests who practiced holistic psychotherapy upon its patients, many of whom were clergy members suffering from psychological problems. Porter's "problem" was not unique among the hospital's patients; two of them were later imprisoned for abusing, between them, hundreds of children.