Analysis
Church Strikes Back at Priests' Accusers

By Jason Berry
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
May 1, 1994

In the 1980s, widespread allegations of child abuse rocked the Catholic Church. Stung by the charges, church officials promised to root out child-molesting priests. They also promised to treat alleged victims with compassion.

But now, after losing an estimated $ 500 million in legal and other expenses, Catholic bishops have apparently adopted a new strategy: bruising counterattacks - including lawsuits and public denunciations - against some families who sue or press charges against priests.

"The church has been playing hardball all over the place," says Jeffrey Hazard, a professor at Yale Law School and author of "Ethics in the Practice of Law." "My guess is that these decisions are made at the highest level of the church."

Some critics say these hard-edged tactics put a fortress church in conflict with the values of pastorship, deepening the stain of scandal. They maintain that such tactics - often used in defending other cases like product liability and environmental pollution - are inappropriate when the client is a Catholic diocese.

"My personal view is that they're doing themselves terrible damage in the long run with the so-called macho defense," Hazard said.

But church officials defend their actions, citing concerns about false accusations.

"Can I legitimately deny someone the right to defend himself?" Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, an influential church leader perhaps most responsible for counterstrike strategies, told CNN.

Bernardin himself was the subject of a sex-abuse lawsuit. The case was dropped after Bernardin's accuser, Steven Cook, withdrew his charges, saying he could not trust his memory.

Examples of the church's new hardball strategy can be found across the country.

In Philadelphia, Ed Morris sued the archdiocese alleging eight years of abuse by a priest during his childhood. Church attorneys countersued Morris's parents for negligence in entrusting him to the priest, whose abuse was at first denied. Morris received an out-of-court settlement and the countersuit was dropped. "It was devastating to my parents," says Morris.

A Chicago woman was threatened with a countersuit if she filed suit against a priest. And two families who sued another Chicago cleric have been hit with defamation countersuits.

In New York, Cardinal John O'Connor has said, "I will not knowingly permit a single act of abuse to be covered up or excused." Yet attorneys at Simpson, Thatcher and Bartlett, a major Manhattan law firm representing the church, responded to the civil suit of a youth who was sodomized by a priest (already convicted and in prison) by saying the victim "willingly consented."

Barbara Blaine, founder of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a national group based in Chicago, says: "When they disclose information about someone's sexual orientation, or make derogatory remarks, as in my case - when the [religious order's] provincial was quoted as saying I was emotionally unstable - it's done to discredit the person.''

Countersuits are one of the principal tactics of the tougher church strategy. Such lawsuits rarely succeed. But time-intensive, costly litigation can function as a punitive tool.

"By countersuing they hope to hoist a wretch for all future plaintiffs - to make an example out of them," said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University.

In contrast, the Boy Scouts of America, which struggled for years to remove pedophiles from its ranks, adopted a different strategy. The group developed training videos for boys and an internal review of volunteers. "The program exposed molesters who'd gone undetected in scouting for years, sometimes decades," writes Patrick Boyle in his new book, "Scout's Honor."

Blaine says most Catholic bishops are "more concerned with legal defense than pastoral response. That's why we stress in support groups, or when people call, not to go to the church for help. These countersuits are a form of abuse."

Ironically, Bernardin was praised by Blaine and others for refusing to countersue Cook when he made his accusations. The bishop is also credited with many reforms in the Chicago diocese, including removing priests with problem pasts and establishing a fitness review board for priests and a victims' assistance ministry.

But Chicago, under Bernardin's leadership, has also become a case study in the church's get-tough strategy.

In 1986, James Serritella, Chicago's archdiocesan attorney, told a meeting of religious order superiors at a River Forest monastery: "When one of these situations develops, those people [meaning families who bring suit] are the enemy and I'm on your side."

In one Chicago case, defense attorneys mounted an aggressive attack. They countersued two couples who filed suit, several years apart, accusing Rev. Robert Lutz, a pastor in suburban Northbrook, of abusing their minor sons.

The first couple, "John and Jane Doe," filed suit in 1989. The case has been marked by lengthy discovery procedures.

The defamation countersuits, filed shortly after the original lawsuit, cited letters the Does wrote to Catholic school board members, criticizing Lutz and a school principal, Alice Halpin, who also was accused of abusing their son. Church attorneys added new countercharges after the Does gave media interviews.

The second family was dragged into the Doe dispute when the mother, under subpoena by church attorneys, said in a deposition that her son had been abused by Lutz. The couple subsequently wrote to Bernardin and in a meeting with the cardinal asked him to remove Lutz. When Bernardin refused, the second couple reluctantly filed suit. They were promptly countersued by Lutz for having written the cardinal and for giving interviews. No media outlet or reporter has been sued.

Lutz is still a pastor in the Chicago archdiocese. In another case, the archdiocese reached an out-of-court settlement with a school principal who, at Lutz's previous parish, accused him of firing her for rebuffing his sexual advances. The church made no admission of guilt in the settlement.

Recently, in Oshkosh, Wis., Rev. Norbert Maday of Chicago was convicted of abusing two altar boys, now in their 20s, at a summer cabin. Maday is the second priest from the Chicago archdiocese convicted in a trial. A criminal trail of a third priest is scheduled in early this month. The Doe v. Lutz case begins June 6.

Several commentators sympathetic to the Catholic Church have urged the bishops not to bunker in behind lawyers in the defense of sexual- abuse lawsuits. Father Andrew Greely, the sociologist, has said, "Whatever the church's intentions, the legal effects are to intimidate parents - have them think they'll be beaten into the ground if you dare to accuse a priest."

Jason Berry is author of "Lead Us Not Into Temptation," a history of sexual conflicts in the clergy.