A public accounting of the systemic sexual abuse of children within the local Catholic Church is imminent, with a judge ordering the Maryland attorney general’s office to release its report on the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Robert Taylor determined that the “need for disclosure outweighs the need for secrecy,” and directed the office of Attorney General Anthony Brown on Friday to prepare a heavily redacted version of its report for public release sometime in March.

“Keeping this report from the public is an injustice,” Taylor wrote in his ruling.

He also noted the report’s speedy release is important because the General Assembly, which is in session until April 10, is considering legislation related to child sexual abuse lawsuits.

The product of a four-year investigation, the report details the rape and torture of more than 600 children and young adults at the hands of clergy in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore going back eight decades, as well as the church’s efforts to protect and enable abusers and to silence victims.

Because the report contains information obtained by way of a grand jury, the judge’s permission was needed to make it public.

Advocates and abuse survivors have demanded accountability for the church, and Taylor’s ruling represented a long-awaited victory.

“People will see what the church has done to the children of Maryland,” said David Lorenz, president of the Maryland chapter of the Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests.

Taylor directed the attorney general’s office to redact 208 names from the report by March 13.

Also, he said in the order that he will hold a future hearing to determine whether a full version of the report should be public.

Brown said in a statement that his office would prepare the redactions expeditiously.

The names to be removed are those of people who have not been previously identified publicly, Taylor wrote, and are either accused of abusing children, covering up that abuse, silencing victims or otherwise enabling abusers.

The judge found that those 208 people must be notified they are in the report, and be given 15 days to tell the court if they want to be heard on the motion to release the document in full. If they do, they will have a chance to review the portion of the report that addresses their involvement and to argue against its disclosure.

With the General Assembly examining whether to repeal the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse lawsuits, and to open a retroactive “lookback” window for victims to sue abusers regardless of when the abuse happened, Taylor wrote that part of his reason for ordering a swift release was to aid lawmakers.

“Any further delay in its release would prevent the General Assembly from considering this 469-page trove of information about this topic,” Taylor wrote.

Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori has stated previously that neither he nor the church as an institution were against the report being made public.

“Ever aware of the pain endured by survivors of child sexual abuse, the archdiocese once again offers its sincere apologies to the victim-survivors who were harmed by a minister of the church and who were harmed by those who failed to protect them and who failed to respond to them with care and compassion,” wrote Christian Kendzierski, the archdiocese’s executive director of communications, in an email to The Baltimore Sun.

He also said the church would continue to pray for the victims.

The archdiocese has more than half a million Catholics and parishes, schools and other institutions in Baltimore City and nine counties across Central and Western Maryland.

The church’s lobbying arm, the Maryland Catholic Conference, opposes lawmakers’ efforts to revive previously time-barred lawsuits for abuse survivors, arguing such a law would be unconstitutional.

But Brown issued a letter Wednesday stating his office would be comfortable defending the proposed Child Victims Act in court.

He said his office’s analysis of the bill found it “not clearly unconstitutional.”

Dozens of abuse survivors testified Thursday at a Senate hearing that having the ability to file lawsuits and confront their abusers and representatives of the institutions where they worked in court would bring a measure of closure to their lives, as the vast majority of perpetrators never faced consequences in criminal courts.

The judge noted that after reviewing tens of thousands of documents, interviewing scores of victims and combing through public records, the grand jury investigation produced one indictment.

Neil Adleberg, 74, a former wrestling coach at Mount Saint Joseph High School was indicted last March in Baltimore County on charges he sexually abused a minor in 2013 and 2014.

The victim was not a student at the school. Adleberg pleaded not guilty; his trial is scheduled for June.

With no more indictments coming — the attorney general’s office told Taylor there wouldn’t be any further — Taylor wrote that the report is the only window into how certain clergy went to “extraordinary lengths to protect abusers, bury accusations, and essentially enable the rape and torture of children and young adults for many years.”

“The only form of justice that may now be available is a public reckoning — a disclosure of the facts as found by the [office of the attorney general] and contained in its report,” Taylor wrote.

While needed, a public reckoning still will feel hollow to some of those who were abused, said survivor Liz Murphy. She was abused by the notorious rapist John Merzbacher when she was a student at the Catholic Community Middle School in South Baltimore in the 1970s.

“It is past time for justice to be served,” Murphy said. “And what is this justice? A damn report and a delay in making it public for the sake of the reputations of a handful of enablers? The Church failed us as children. The state of Maryland failed us as children.”

The redactions will continue to shield, at least temporarily, some of the accused.

Attorneys for an anonymous group of 16 people named in the report but neither indicted nor included on the church’s public list of those “credibly accused” of sexual abuse asked Taylor to ensure the 208 people named in the report be notified in advance and allowed to object to the report’s full release.

Some of the 208 can’t be notified because they are dead, according to the attorney general’s office.

The archdiocese is paying the fees of former Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein, a Democrat, and attorney William J. Murphy, both of Zuckerman Spaeder in Baltimore, who represent the group of 16. The attorneys declined to comment on Taylor’s ruling.

Taylor’s ruling also laid out who can and cannot participate in the proceedings going forward. A group of survivors — Teresa Lancaster, Jean Wehner, Michele Stanton and Donna Von Den Bosch, who were abused while attending Archbishop Keough High School in Southwest Baltimore — can continue in the case, for now. Taylor found that although they are victims of abuse, they are not victims legally in the specific case that involves the report.

The judge said a group of advocates, including SNAP and Lorenz, cannot continue making arguments in the case, as they are not victims of any crimes covered in the report.

The secret group of 16 can continue directly participating in the case, with Taylor finding them to be “interested parties” in its outcome. And the archdiocese itself, as an institution, remains a part of the matter because it is the sole “witness” relied on by the grand jury.

Taylor found that the attorney general’s office is the only true “party” in the case.

Attorney Kurt Wolfgang represents Lancaster and Wehner and said he and his clients would continue to argue for the report’s full release. The executive director of the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center, Wolfgang said he would also push for the judge to consider the possibility of referring some of the evidence to a grand jury in the hopes more people could be indicted.

Taylor rejected Wolfgang’s original request for the same, and wrote that a grand jury already had conducted an investigation.

The attorney general’s office in November revealed it had evidence that 13 still-living clergy members committed sexual abuse and had not been previously identified. The office committed to not revealing their names because it did not plan to seek criminal charges.

“The hundreds of victims of clerical abuse over the years have suffered from decades of systemic injustice,” Taylor wrote. “As the state has argued in its pleadings, the passage of time, the changes in criminal laws over the years, and the concerted efforts of various individuals within the archdiocese have effectively ensured that the perpetrators of abuse identified in the report will escape any form of formal criminal sanction.”