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  Church Fights Plan to Ease Sex-Suit Filing
Allowing All Victims, No Matter How Long Ago the Abuse Occurred, to File Suit Would Bring Financial Ruin, It Said

By Craig R. McCoy and Angela Couloumbis
Philadelphia Inquirer [Pennsylvania]
December 4, 2005

The Catholic Church in Pennsylvania is lobbying against a proposal that would allow sexual-abuse victims from decades ago to file lawsuits, saying it could cause financial ruin for the church.

Some Harrisburg lawmakers want the state to create a one-year "window" to allow victims to sue, regardless of when they were abused. This would relax a strict statute of limitations that has kept virtually all of those cases out of the courts.

Pushing for the change are victims' groups and the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, which issued a scathing report on clergy sexual abuse in September.

On Friday afternoon, after being questioned by The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Archdiocese issued a statement supporting some proposed reforms and explaining its opposition to any change that would permit old allegations to enter the courts.

"The archdiocese believes such a proposal is unfair and unworkable," the statement said.

It warned that the change would likely expose the church and other institutions to huge damages, causing an "incalculable financial impact... felt in every corner of Pennsylvania."

For weeks, the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, an influential lobbying force in the state capital, has been warning lawmakers that changing the statute could unleash a destructive avalanche of lawsuits.

The conference's executive director, Robert J. O'Hara Jr., told lawmakers that the proposal would hurt Catholic schoolchildren, and pointed out that three U.S. dioceses have filed for bankruptcy under pressure from abuse victims, several legislators said.

Before a bill has even been filed, some Harrisburg politicians are quietly seeking a deal - leaving the law untouched, but pressuring the state's Catholic dioceses to put up millions for a victim-compensation fund.

"We have to find a way to look at all the issues so those individuals can be compensated," said State Rep. Dennis M. O'Brien, a Philadelphia Republican who leads a group of lawmakers working to implement recommendations in the district attorney's abuse report.

Archdiocesan spokeswoman Donna Farrell said it would be "premature" to comment on a victims' fund.

The debate in Harrisburg was ignited by the district attorney's three-year investigation, which exhaustively documented how two cardinals and top aides hid decades of abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.

The report identified 63 abusers and said there were hundreds of victims, many of them children.

Because of limits in Pennsylvania law, those victims have had almost no success in suing the church.

Although other dioceses have been forced to pay millions, the Philadelphia Archdiocese had paid out only $200,000 to settle sex-abuse cases. In contrast, the Camden Diocese has paid out $6 million.

Nearly all of the suits against the Philadelphia Archdiocese have been dismissed. Victims who were assaulted many years ago, as children or teens, failed to go to court by age 23 - once the cutoff age under Pennsylvania law.

After the clergy-abuse scandal erupted nationwide in 2002, the state changed the law to allow complaints until victims turned 30. But the change wasn't retroactive.

Tammy Lerner, a spokeswoman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said fresh lawsuits would reveal damaging information about abusive priests and the officials who protected them, particularly outside of Philadelphia.

"They're scared to death this is going to cost them millions of dollars," Lerner said, referring to church leaders.

"Their main concern is PR, damage control. They know that statewide this would mean they would have to open their secret archives, and they don't want that."

In the report, a grand jury called for a temporary reprieve from the statute limit. For one year, victims could sue the church, no matter when the abuse took place.

That idea is modeled on a similar window that California legislators opened in 2003. By the time it closed, more than 800 lawsuits were filed.

Although the total California price tag is still unknown, the Orange County Diocese last year agreed to pay $100 million to 87 plaintiffs.

Elsewhere, three other dioceses - Tucson, Ariz.; Portland, Ore.; and Spokane, Wash. - filed for bankruptcy protection after being hit by a wave of lawsuits.

A diocese in Kentucky has set up a $120 million fund, in the biggest settlement to date, while Boston has agreed to pay $85 million.

But thus far, these payments have apparently not caused any cuts in Catholic parishes or schools, according to church officials in the six dioceses.

Instead, the expense has been covered by selling property and by tapping insurance, those officials said. In Boston, for instance, the church sold its bishop's residence and surrounding land for $99 million.

Marci Hamilton, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York and an expert on clergy abuse, said the church in Pennsylvania should disclose its finances if it wants to argue that paying victims would damage church services.

The Philadelphia Archdiocese also owns real estate worth tens of millions of dollars, including its 71-acre seminary property, valued at $68 million and its Center City headquarters, valued at $9 million, records show.

The Philadelphia Archdiocese "as a matter of policy" does not disclose the value of its property and investments, Farrell said.

Another law professor, Mark Sargent, dean of the Villanova University Law School, said that advocates of the change were painting a too-rosy picture of the ability of the Philadelphia church to handle a tide of litigation from abuse victims.

Once the statute were lifted, he said, Philadelphia would likely face an extraordinary volume of claims - many more than other dioceses.

Critics say that's already happened in Los Angeles, where 560 victims filed suit after the window opened. Lawyers estimate that claims may total $500 million.

In its statement, the Philadelphia Archdiocese said it would be "fundamentally unfair" to revive allegations from decades ago. Some abusing priests identified in the report are dead.

"As time passes, discovering the truth becomes harder and sometimes even impossible," the church said.

The archdiocese's insurance policies wouldn't begin to cover the costs, the church said. Paying millions to sexual-abuse victims would create "another group of victims" - the neglected children, hungry families and homeless people served by Catholic social services.

The church endorses other recommended reforms under consideration by lawmakers. Among them: measures to remove the statute of limitations on criminal charges for sexual assault, and to permit authorities to file criminal charges against supervisors who do nothing about employees who abuse children.

While most of the changes seem likely to pass, the political outlook for the one-year window on civil suits is uncertain. Although a number of lawmakers support it, none has stepped up to sponsor legislation.

One supporter is State Sen. Jane Clare Orie (R., Allegheny), a leader on sexual-assault issues in the capital.

"I believe that these victims have suffered tremendously," she said. "I understand the financial burden, but also the human tragedy, and I believe that outweighs it."

The idea also has already attracted some powerful critics, including State Senate Minority Leader Robert J. Mellow (D., Lackawanna.) "To go back and do things retroactively would make me very uncomfortable," he said.

State Rep. Douglas G. Reichley (R., Berks) supports a compromise: The church would set up a fund to compensate victims, and the law would remain unchanged.

Otherwise, Reichley warned, bishops in Pennsylvania might have to suffer the "spectacle of legislative public hearings" with testimony from victims - and church leaders.

 
 

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