In 1987, a law firm for the Archdiocese of Baltimore contacted a prosecutor with a problem: was the church obligated to report a priest who had lately been accused of trying to rape a teenage woman a ten years before? The reply was no, in accordance to final week’s comprehensive report into sexual abuse and coverups in the archdiocese. But the priest could be charged with assault, battery or tried rape, the assistant state’s attorney mentioned. Neither the law firm nor the archdiocesan official who spoke to the prosecutor provided the identify of the priest, Father Thomas J. Bauernfeind, or formally documented that a girl had named Bauernfeind as her…