LOS ANGELES (CA)
National Catholic Reporter
Jul. 26, 2012
By Tom Roberts
Hundreds of plaintiffs involved in a historic sex abuse settlement more than five years ago with the Los Angeles archdiocese may be coming to the end of a long struggle to gain access to thousands of pages of documentation detailing the conduct of church officials in handling the scandal.
On July 18, a California Appeals Court denied the latest petition of the archdiocese to restrict access to priest personnel files sought by attorney Anthony De Marco as part of a current abuse lawsuit he has filed against the archdiocese.
The significance of the recent decision, however, goes beyond the case in question, De Marco said in a phone interview Tuesday. He said California Superior Court Judge Emilie H. Elias looked over the 25 files in question in the current case, some of which overlap those sought as part of a $660 million settlement in 2007. He said she told attorneys on both sides that she would use the request as a “test case” and that if the appeals court is satisfied with what she was agreeing to release, that the same criteria would be used for the rest of the documents being sought. She said if the archdiocese’s petition to keep the records sealed is denied, she would rapidly go through the rest of the documents in question.
Tod M. Tamberg, director of media relations for the Los Angeles archdiocese, disagrees with De Marco’s assessment. The denial of the church’s petition “does not affect release or publication of documents,” he said in an email response to questions from NCR. “The issue was only whether certain materials could be disclosed to the plaintiff’s lawyer in one specific case.”
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