Mitchell Garabedian

In 1994, a mother asked Mitchell Garabedian to speak with her three children. He asked about baseball, school, friends, and the people who visited them. When the conversation reached the priest, he later recalled, their manner changed: they became nervous and stopped talking freely. The mother introduced him to neighbors and relatives. Other children had been visited by the same priest, John J. Geoghan.

Garabedian had built a general practice representing individuals after becoming a lawyer in 1979. On July 9, 1996, he filed a complaint against Geoghan on behalf of three children and their mother. It also named an unidentified defendant alleged to be responsible for Geoghan’s hiring, supervision, or retention, reserving an amendment once that identity was known.

As more people came forward, the civil cases examined what Archdiocesan officials allegedly knew about Geoghan, how he was assigned, and whether church leaders had failed to protect children despite the information available to them. The people and parents Garabedian represented brought individual claims, each with its own allegations, asserted injury, and relationship to the church defendants.

Requests for the Church’s Records

Garabedian later described building his requests for documents from evidence already in hand. Each disclosure gave him grounds to seek more, until he could ask the court for access to the church’s secret files.

The civil suits produced an extensive discovery record, but a 2000 confidentiality order kept virtually all case documents under seal. Even the parties could not inspect them without signing promises against disclosure. The lawsuits had reached the records; the public still could not see them.

In November 2001, Judge Constance Sweeney reversed the order on the Boston Globe’s motion. She found that secrecy had impeded public and press access to a case involving matters of intense public interest.

The Archdiocese appealed, arguing among other things that relationships between Geoghan and his superiors belonged under ecclesiastical rather than secular authority. A single justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court rejected the challenge in December.

When church counsel sought another delay in January to review the volume and consider protection for people named in the documents, Sweeney refused. Her order had been issued in November. “I expect my order to be complied with,” she told counsel.

Garabedian’s clients had sustained the litigation that generated the discovery record. The Globe sought public access, and the judges required disclosure. Before release, estimates ranged from ten thousand to twenty thousand pages.

Each Client’s Assent

Garabedian negotiated a common agreement for eighty-six clients, each of whom retained the right to decide whether to settle. In September 2002, he obtained formal approval or assent from all of them to a $10 million settlement with the Archdiocese over their civil claims involving the former priest.

The settlement allocated $10,000 to each of sixteen relatives. Twenty claimants in a separate category averaged approximately $27,000. The remaining fifty divided $9.3 million, with reported individual amounts ranging from $94,000 to $313,000.

Judge Sweeney approved the settlement on September 19, resolving the civil claims through negotiated compensation. Geoghan’s criminal conviction had concerned a particular incident prosecuted by the state under the criminal burden of proof. Garabedian’s clients had pursued their own civil allegations and claims against the church defendants.

The Records and the People

The discovery record remained publicly accessible after the settlement under the access rulings the Globe had obtained. The preserved Geoghan archive comprises 8,478 pages of depositions and church files.

In the broader 2003 Archdiocese settlement, Garabedian represented 120 claimants, working with other survivor lawyers on claims involving different clergy, clients, and negotiated terms. He continues to lead the Law Offices of Mitchell Garabedian in Boston, representing survivors of abuse in clergy, school, scouting, and other settings.

In a 2017 interview, his client Robert Hoatson described the care that accompanied the search for evidence. Garabedian would say, “I’m very sorry to have to ask you this,” then explain, “But I have to know the whole story.” With clients’ permission, he sought school and medical records and criminal reports to support their accounts.