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	Equal Justice for Prophets and Priests By Rick Casey Houston Chronicle April 26, 2008 http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/casey/5733212.html Scattering 462 children who've been living in a strange part of the 19th century into the rickety current system of foster homes smacks of punishing the alleged victims. You can't envy San Angelo District Judge Barbara Walther — who made the decision — her choices in the Yearning for Zion case. You can, however, wish the state of Texas had shown similar vigor in protecting the children of some other religious groups with sexual practices that seem out of touch with modern society. Say, for example, the church that prescribes celibacy for its priests. Aiding and abetting The state not only turned a blind eye for many years, but at times it actually abetted the Roman Catholic Church. Back in 1988, for example, the church used and abused the state's court system to protect one of its priests. In a rare move, the San Antonio district attorney sought a grand jury indictment of a priest sexually abusing a child. The grand jury willingly obliged. About a month later the family filed a lawsuit against the church. The church quietly reached a settlement with the family. A judge ordered the terms of the settlement sealed. The priest goes free It likely was for a substantial amount of money, because the family told the district attorney it did not want the boy to testify against the priest. The district attorney acquiesced and dropped the charges. The San Antonio Express-News, together with a local financial contributor to the church, went to court to seek to unseal the record. The church fought hard, and won. An appeals court, by a 2-1 vote, played an unholy game of Catch-22 on the church's behalf. The newspaper and interested Catholic layman could not intervene in the suit as it was playing out in court because they had no interest in the settlement. They did have an interest once the case was sealed, the appeals court agreed. But because the judge ordered it sealed at the same time he entered a final judgment, the case was over, and it was too late for them to intervene. The dissenter was the late Justice Carlos Cadena, one of the most brilliant judges in Texas history. The Bexar County Courthouse is now named after him. Calling the majority's reasoning "somewhat strange," he wrote: "The requirement of openness is basic to our form of government." The majority's ruling meant we couldn't know for sure whether the secret agreement amounted to the family declining to prosecute the priest after receiving hush money from the church. Put another way, the sealing order may have masked the church paying money raised from the faithful to keep a child molester from going to prison. Orlando Garcia, then a legislator and now a federal judge, was so incensed to learn of the secret deal and the court's ruling that he snuck a law through the Legislature to override the courts. "It was just a one-line bill mandating the Supreme Court to promulgate rules on how to seal records," Garcia recalls. "It was assigned to the Jurisprudence Committee, but I went to the chairman and told him it was just a simple little bill that wasn't going to do much. So he transferred it over to the local consent calendar." That is a procedure for handling non-controversial matters. Garcia said he figured some of the big corporations, who like sealing lawsuits so other plaintiffs won't know how much they are willing to pay to settle, would fight the bill if it went through a hearings process. The bill passed. Tom Phillips, the Houston lawyer who was then chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, appointed Rep. Garcia to a task force that developed rules that require a public notice and an open hearing of any request to seal court records. Any person is allowed to object. The judge must agree that the argument for secrecy "clearly outweighs" a "presumption of openness" for court proceedings and "any probable adverse effect that sealing will have on the general public health and safety." Such as, say, letting pedophile priests go loose. The Supreme Court passed the rules, recalls Garcia, by a 5-4 vote. It was one small step for childhood in the face of clerical power. Not that the church (Catholic and other) is the only perpetrator that the state has failed to pursue for sexual exploitation of children. Before the Texas Observer and newspapers exposed the scandal of sexual abuse of incarcerated children by staffers of the Texas Youth Commission last year, state officials themselves covered up accusations and evidence. So, good for Texas for its efforts at protecting the children of a polygamist sect. Let's see the state exercise equal vigilance over more mainstream religious groups. And over itself. You can write to Rick Casey at P.O. Box 4260, Houston, TX 77210, or e-mail him at rick.casey@chron.com.
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