NEW YORK
Crux
By John L. Allen Jr.
Editor May 18, 2016
There are plenty of tough jobs in the Catholic Church, but whenever the issue flares up, Dennis Poust of the New York State Catholic Conference faces an especially daunting challenge – trying to bridge the gap between logic and emotion when it comes to suing over clerical sexual abuse.
Rationally speaking, it’s easy enough to make the case that allowing people to sue for alleged crimes from, say, fifty or sixty years ago, when by now the alleged perpetrator is dead, the supervisors are all dead, and there are no witnesses or any other evidence, simply violates common sense.
On the other hand, who wants to be the person who tells an abuse survivor that there’s no way to get justice?
“Nobody wants to be the ‘bad guy’ when it comes to sex abuse,” said Poust, who serves as director of communications for the conference, the lobbying arm of the New York bishops, which is currently fighting a proposal in the state legislature to open a window to file lawsuits over abuse otherwise barred by the statute of limitations.
“I’m a parent too, and I have children,” Poust told Crux on Monday. “I’m as disgusted as anybody by what happened, in the Church and elsewhere.”
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