Editor’s note: The Baltimore Banner published an article alleging that Gerry Koob, Sister Cathy Cesnik’s former boyfriend and a fellow priest and educator at Keough High School, had raped and sexually assaulted multiple students 50 years ago. The article is based on interviews with two women who asked to remain anonymous; both women first realized that Koob was their assaulter after The Keepers came out.

For many of the teenage girls who attended Baltimore’s Archbishop Keough High School in the late ’60s, Sister Catherine “Cathy” Cesnik was a revelation. Young and kind, she was a dynamic educator who loved poetry and music. She was also a friend, mentor and — perhaps most importantly — a confidant. 

The Keepers, a 2017 documentary series directed by Ryan White, suggests that what Cesnik was told in confidence by her students — specifically about the horrific sexual abuse they said they endured at the hands of the school’s chaplain and guidance counselor Father Joseph Maskell — could be what led to the young nun’s still-unsolved 1969 murder. 

Decades later, White followed two of Cesnik’s former students, Gemma Hoskins and Abbie Schaub, as they embarked on a determined quest to find out who killed her. In the process, the women discovered potential collusion between the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Baltimore Police Department and the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office. Determined to undo the cult of silence around the sex crimes and violence committed by leaders within the Catholic Church, Hoskins, Schaub and their former schoolmate, sexual assault survivor Jean Hargadon Wehner, faced down powerful institutions with brave wit and an ironclad dedication to justice. 

Today, six years after the docuseries began streaming, survivors of sexual abuse are seeing progress. In March, the state of Maryland passed the Child Victims Act of 2023, eliminating the civil statute of limitations on all childhood sexual abuse claims. In April, the Maryland attorney general released a damning report on child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The report is the result of a four-year-long investigation and names more than 150 members of the clergy as abusers and more than 600 children as known victims.  

Many are hopeful that the previously sealed grand jury testimony included in the report might provide new information in the ongoing investigation into Cesnik’s murder.

Here’s what recent legal developments could mean for the survivors whose stories you first heard in The Keepers.

Sister Catherine Cesnik’s murder

Cesnik left the Baltimore apartment she shared with her friend and fellow nun, Sister Russell Phillips, on the evening of Nov. 7, 1969, and drove to a local shopping center to buy a gift. When Cesnik failed to return that night, Sister Russell first turned to Pete McKeon and Gerry Koob, two friends who were priests and lived nearby (Koob was in a romantic relationship with Cesnik). The group called the police in the early morning hours after Cesnik’s empty car was found near her apartment complex. Two months later, Cesnik’s body was found at a garbage dump in a suburban area near Baltimore. Medical examination concluded she’d died from blunt force trauma. She was 26 years old. 

The accusations against Father Joseph Maskell

In 1992, former student Jean Wehner came forward, under the alias of Jane Doe, with recovered memories of being raped and abused by Father Joseph Maskell, who was the Archbishop Keough’s school chaplain and guidance counselor. She also claimed that months after she confided in Cesnik about the abuse, Maskell took her to the young nun’s dead body in an unidentified wooded location and threatened Wehner’s life. For Hoskins and Schaub, Wehner provided a link between Cesnik’s murder and the sexual abuse within the school, as they believe Cesnik planned to come forward with what she knew. 

In 1994, Wehner and Teresa Lancaster, a fellow alum who alleged that she was also abused by Maskell, filed a $40 million lawsuit against the priest and the archdiocese. However, the case never went to trial, in part because of the existing statute of limitations on reporting sexual assault. Maskell died in 2001. Wehner and other survivors eventually reached monetary settlements with the archdiocese. 

Justice for Catherine Cesnik

In 2013, Hoskins and Schaub, still haunted by what happened to their beloved teacher, started a Facebook group: Justice for Catherine Cesnik and Joyce Malecki. Malecki was a Baltimore woman who disappeared from a shopping center on Nov. 11, 1969, and was found two days later in the Little Patuxent River on the Fort Meade Army base, close to where Cesnik’s body would be discovered months later. Malecki was strangled and stabbed. Her murder also remains unsolved. 

The Facebook group was a supplement to Hoskins’ and Schaub’s personal investigation into the murders. After Wehner and Lancaster’s suit, more victims of assault by members of the Catholic Church continued to come forward. With their faith in the institutions they’d grown up with shaken by the survivors’ stories, Hoskins and Schaub felt that they needed to finally find justice for Cesnik. They’ve since met with dozens of people involved in the case and uncovered records that had been buried for years. Their quest put the case back in the media spotlight.  

Wehner has continued to speak out about her experience and her testimony is a critical part of the continuing investigation into Cesnik’s murder. 

New Developments for the Civil Suit

When Wehner and Lancaster filed their civil suit against Maskell, the statute of limitations on sexual assault cases was three years. In 2023, the state of Maryland passed the Child Victims Act, which removed the ​​statute of limitations for survivors of child sex abuse in Maryland to sue their abusers.

In April of this year, a state report was released that found “staggering” rates of church sexual abuse in Baltimore. The attorney general’s report has been years in the making, and while parts of it are redacted because of outstanding lawsuits pertaining to its release, it details a devastating pattern of abuse and cover-ups. In the report, the names of over 150 clergy accused of perpetrating or covering up abuse, with 15 names redacted. However, there was one name that wasn’t in the report — identified only as a “Jesuit intern.” Two women came forward to the Baltimore Banner and alleged that Gerry Koob — a former priest who was dating Cathy Cesnik at the time of her death — is the Jesuit intern in question.  Survivors are hopeful that the report, which includes the previously sealed grand jury testimony, might provide information in the ongoing investigation into Cesnik’s murder. Still, the fight for justice and a long overdue reckoning with the Baltimore Archdiocese continues. Wehner, speaking to the media about the report said, “I expected them to do the right thing in 1992. I’m still angry.” 

Editor’s note: Sections of this article have been updated to account for recent developments reported in the Baltimore Banner. 

 Watch The Keepers on Netflix.