Skip to main content

Part Two: The Abuse They Buried Maryland’s Catholic Cover-Up

🙏 Part Two: The Abuse They Buried  Maryland’s Catholic Cover-Up

The Sassy Gazette proudly presents Dicking Around With Richie: A True Crime Feed

🔥 “The Church didn’t just protect predators. It sacrificed a truth-telling nun and kept grooming the next victims.”

📍 Focus:

This is about what Sister Cathy may have died trying to expose  the decades-long abuse at Archbishop Keough High School and the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s masterclass in cover-up.

This isn’t just a story about one predator priest. It’s about an entire institution that chose power over protection, silence over survivors, and loyalty to monsters over justice for children.



🧠 Maskell the Predator

Father A. Joseph Maskell wasn’t just a priest. He was also a licensed psychologist, counselor, and chaplain at Keough High School a job that gave him direct access to vulnerable girls under the guise of therapy and confession.

By the time Maskell arrived at Keough in the late ’60s, complaints had already followed him from St. Clement’s Church in Lansdowne. The Archdiocese kept him in rotation. He went from parish to parish, victim to victim.

😡 Victims Silenced, Again and Again

In 1994, Jane Doe and Jane Roe later revealed as Jean Hargadon Wehner and Teresa Lancaster filed a civil suit against Maskell, Magnus, the Archdiocese, and others. Their testimony was chilling:

  • Jean said Maskell raped her and forced her to ingest his semen under the pretense of “receiving the Holy Spirit.”
  • Teresa said she was raped by police officers while Maskell waited in the car.

They remembered this abuse decades later through repressed memories a trauma response common in childhood sexual abuse cases.

The lawsuit was dismissed due to Maryland’s statute of limitations and skepticism about recovered memory. They were re-victimized by the very system that should have protected them.

🗂️ The Archdiocese’s Playbook: Reassign. Deny. Bury. Repeat.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore had internal records of abuse allegations. Instead of alerting authorities, they moved priests like chess pieces.

In 1994, Maskell buried boxes of documents in a cemetery. When unearthed by police, they revealed patient files, therapy notes, and potentially damning evidence. Nothing came of it. Sharon May, then the sex crimes prosecutor, refused to prosecute.

To this day, many believe she helped shield the Church rather than protect survivors.

💀 The Murder That May Have Sparked It All: Joyce Malecki

Four days after Sister Cathy’s disappearance, Joyce Helen Malecki vanished from a mall. Her body was found at Fort Meade stabbed, strangled, and bound.

Joyce wasn’t a Keough student, but she belonged to a parish where Maskell once served. Her boyfriend was stationed at Fort Meade. The timing and location are suspicious many believe her death was connected to the abuse ring.

In 2023, Joyce’s body was exhumed for DNA testing. The case is no longer ignored.



⚖️ Cracks in the Wall: Settlements, Bankruptcy & the AG Report

After The Keepers aired in 2017, Maskell’s name flooded the headlines. The Archdiocese responded with PR damage control:

  • Private settlements without admissions of guilt.
  • A Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 2023 just two days before Maryland’s Child Victims Act became law.
  • Refusal to release full records about abusive clergy.

The 2023 Maryland Attorney General’s Report revealed:

  • 156 abusive clergy and staff credibly accused.
  • Over 600 known victims in the Archdiocese of Baltimore alone.
  • Decades of cover-ups, intimidation, and shuffling predators across parishes.

🎙️ Ongoing Advocates: Gemma Hoskins & Survivor-Led Resistance

Gemma Hoskins, one of Sister Cathy’s former students, continues to investigate the case through her podcast, Who Killed Sister Cathy?

Survivors like Teresa Lancaster and Jean Wehner refuse to be silenced. Their advocacy brought international awareness to what was buried in Baltimore. They are the reason we know what the Church wanted to forget.



💥 Richie’s Rant

Let’s get this straight:

The Catholic Church didn’t just fail to stop abuse it curated the conditions for it to thrive.

They knew about Maskell. They enabled him. They moved him. They protected him.

How many girls turned to addiction? How many took their own lives? How many still live with trauma while the men who harmed them were promoted?

Let’s not forget Cardinal Theodore McCarrick another high-ranking predator. You can’t convince me he didn’t know Maskell. These men ran in the same powerful East Coast religious and political circles.

McCarrick helped build and protect the very system that kept monsters like Maskell in power. He didn’t need to bury a body to be complicit he helped bury the truth.

🗣️ Up Next on Dicking Around With Richie:

Part 3: Beyond Baltimore – A Church-Wide Betrayal

We’re going national. Pennsylvania. Boston. California. It’s time to name names, expose dioceses, and reveal just how far the rot goes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Disappearance of Kortne Ciera Stouffer: Silence Inside a Palmyra Apartment

Little Dickies The Disappearance of Kortne Ciera Stouffer Palmyra, Pennsylvania | July 29, 2012 Kortne Ciera Stouffer , 21, disappeared from Palmyra, Pennsylvania on July 29, 2012. Her whereabouts remain unknown. There are cases where the silence feels earned. Time passes. Leads dry up. Lives move on. And then there are cases where the silence feels manufactured . Kortne Ciera Stouffer vanished in the early morning hours of July 29, 2012, from an apartment building in Palmyra, Pennsylvania. She was 21 years old. She did not take her phone. She did not take her purse. She did not take her car. She did not take her dog. She did not leave a note. She did not say goodbye. She did not disappear into thin air. She simply stopped being seen. The Case Snapshot Name: Kortne Ciera Stouffer Age: 21 Last Known Location: 810 West Main Street, Palmyra, PA Date Last Seen: July 29, 2012 Case Status: Endangere...
2 comments
Read more

The Murder of Peggy Reber: The Girl the System Left Behind

The Murder of Peggy Reber The Girl the System Left Behind ⚠️ Reader Discretion Advised The following case involves the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl and includes references to sexual assault and extreme violence. Out of respect for the victim, graphic details are not presented in a sensational manner. However, the nature of the crime may still be distressing to some readers. Please take care while reading. Author’s Note Before we begin, let me be clear about something. There are three kinds of crimes I cannot abide in this world: crimes against children, crimes against animals, and crimes against people with intellectual disabilities. This case involves one of the worst of them. So we’re not here for spectacle. We’re here for the truth. Fourteen years old. A school portrait, a shy smile, and a life that should have stretched decades beyond this frame. Pegg...
2 comments
Read more

Missing in Monongahela: The Disappearance of Shelby Rhodes

Little Dickies, There are nights when a town goes to sleep and nothing changes. And then there are nights when someone steps outside, takes a short walk into the cold, and the story never comes back. This is one of those nights. This is the disappearance of Shelby Rhodes . The Man Behind the Missing Poster Before the alerts, the shares, and the frantic search along the riverbanks, Shelby Rhodes was a young man trying to build something out of his life. He was twenty six years old. Red hair. Red beard. A face that looked like it belonged in a music video or behind a microphone, not on a missing person flyer. Shelby was from the Monongahela and Monessen area, part of the old Mon Valley where the river has always been both lifeline and danger. Family described him as resilient, sensitive, and creative. He had been knocked down more than once in life, but he kept getting back up. Tha...
1 comment
Read more