By David Yonke
Toledo Blade
March 28, 2008
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080328/NEWS02/803280358
The judge presiding in the civil lawsuit against Toledo priest Gerald Robinson yesterday declined a request to voluntarily step down from the case and set a trial date for May 4, 2009.
Mark Davis, the attorney representing the woman who sued anonymously as Survivor Doe with her husband, Spouse Doe, filed a motion last week asking Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Ruth Ann Franks to recuse herself from the case.
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The motion questioned the judge's impartiality because of her "immutable Catholic upbringing" and followed a similar recusal request filed in November that cited the judge's husband's role as a police investigator in the criminal case in which Robinson was convicted of murder.
Judge Franks said in her written opinion that her husband, Josh Franks, a retired criminalist with the Toledo police crime laboratory, had testified in the "unrelated" murder trial but is unlikely to be called to the stand in the civil case.
She also pointed out that the motion's claim that she was raised a Catholic was "erroneous." Even if she were a Catholic, Judge Franks said, the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that religious affiliation is not cause for a judge's disqualification.
Mr. Davis said afterward that he was told by "numerous sources" that Judge Franks was a Catholic, but that his sources and his motion clearly were wrong in that regard.
"It was a simple error on my part," he said. "She had a good sense of humor about it. She could have fairly come down hard on me for that."
Survivor Doe's suit claims that Robinson and Toledoan Jerry Mazuchowski dressed as nuns and tortured, raped, and abused her in satanic rituals when she was a child.
Mr. Mazuchowski, who is representing himself in the case, yesterday said after the hearing that the woman's accusations are "obviously nonsense."
Robinson's attorneys declined to comment to the news media.
Mr. Davis said his client, a Toledo woman now in her 40s, is doing well but has mixed emotions over the possibility of testifying in court.
"She's been told so many times, 'You're not allowed to speak of this.' Her abusers threatened to kill her if she talked about it. So she's elated and excited that she now has a chance to tell her story," Mr. Davis said.
"She also is burdened by the realization that she will have to relive these experiences by testifying. But she's feeling strong. She survived this before, and she'll survive it again."
Robinson was convicted in May, 2006, for the 1980 murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl.
The 69-year-old priest is serving a 15-years-to-life sentence in the Hocking Correctional Facility in southern Ohio.
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