CONNECTICUT
Boston Globe
By Sacha Pfeiffer GLOBE STAFF MAY 14, 2016
The knock on Keith Claffey’s window caught him off guard.
He had just pulled into his driveway after a grocery trip when he heard a light rap on glass. An Amazon delivery, he wondered? The clipboard-carrying man outside his car did have something to deliver, but it was an unpleasant surprise: a subpoena by an insurance company ordering him to testify at a federal trial.
The insurer wanted to ask Claffey a question in court about a traumatic experience from his childhood: When had he first told church officials that, beginning at age 11, he had been repeatedly molested by a priest?
His answer could help determine whether Interstate Fire & Casualty Co. must reimburse the Archdiocese of Hartford for more than $1 million it paid to settle sexual abuse cases against several priests. At issue: whether the church is entitled to insurance coverage for abuse it should have known was likely to occur. Interstate is refusing to cover the settlements.
“Why am I getting dragged back into this more than 30 years later?” said Claffey, 54, who grew up in Bloomfield, Conn., and lives in Maplewood, N.J. “It definitely brought a lot of it all back, and the thought of going through that in open court would be horrifying.”
Why did it take a succession of three cardinals and many bishops 34 years to place children out of John J. Geoghan’s reach?
Since the 1950s, the Catholic Church has paid an estimated $3 billion in clergy sex abuse settlements, according to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, some of which was covered by liability insurance that protects dioceses from lawsuits. Occasionally there are disputes over whether claims should be covered, and those legal battles are usually resolved privately or in court proceedings that receive little public notice.
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