BALTIMORE (MD)
Washington Post
October 2, 2023
By Petula Dvorak
The church has characterized its Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a matter of survival. But it comes at the expense of its survivors.
When the morning sun breaks through the restored skylights of the Baltimore Basilica, the entire ceiling glows thanks to the double-shell dome hiding those windows — a feature Thomas Jefferson suggested.
Two massive oil paintings — gifted to the basilica by France’s King Louis XVIII — hang near the marble busts and bronze tributes to archbishops and cardinals who were in charge when a little girl was raped and told she had received “holy communion,” according to a sweeping investigation released in the spring. And when a little boy was given cash and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer after being orally raped and told he would be “damned to hell” if he told anyone. And, investigators found, when a priest who had been accused of raping multiple boys over many years was asked to resign, he was offered a hefty package of benefits when he finally left.
The first Roman Catholic cathedral built in the United States is a spectacular, historic, gilded, neoclassical confection. And it’s the heart of the Catholic archdiocese that filed for bankruptcy Friday, two days before a new state law took effect that eased the path for child sex abuse victims to file civil suits.
But it’s not about the money.
“This is a last-minute sandbagging effort to make sure survivors don’t get any relief,” said Robert Jenner, one of the attorneys representing some of the people who said they were among at least 600 children abused by clergy in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Maryland’s hard-fought Child Victims Act removes any statute of limitations for child sexual abuse victims to sue the institutions that harbored their abusers. It was the result of years of advocacy by state Del. C.T. Wilson (D-Charles), whose personal experience drove his efforts.
This lawmaker had to revisit his own, horrific childhood sex abuse story to help others
The legislation advanced this spring as the Maryland attorney general’s office issued a report detailing horrific accounts of more than 156 predators and enablers from the church preying on at least 600 children.
“Time and again,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Carrie Williams, “the archdiocese chose the abuser over the abused, the powerful over the weak, and the adult over the child.”
Instead of finally accepting accountability, the archdiocese filed a last-minute case declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which it refers to as “reorganization.” The church has characterized this as a matter of survival. But it comes at the expense of the survivors.
“Chapter 11 reorganization is the best path forward to compensate equitably all victim-survivors, given the Archdiocese’s limited financial resources, which would have otherwise been exhausted on litigation,” Archbishop William E. Lori said in a letter posted on the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s website.
The archdiocese said it has already paid more than $13.2 million to 303 survivors who came forward with claims that fit within the statute of limitations.
That comes to about $43,500 for each victim.
But this isn’t about the money.
What has been offered barely covers therapy bills, let alone makes up for decades of fear and trauma, of lifelong struggles and lost potential in each of those adults who said the church’s clergy molested, raped, threatened, lied to and manipulated them as children.
For the survivors, Jenner said, it’s not about the money.
“I’ve been a trial lawyer for 38 years and I’ve never met a group of people like this, where money is so secondary,” Jenner said. “They are interested in having their stories told, to be heard.”
Having a lawsuit on file and a day in court gives outspoken survivors a chance to be believed and gives quiet survivors the support and power of knowing they are not alone.
Now, they won’t have that.
“When an entity files for bankruptcy, by virtue of federal statute, you may no longer sue them,” Jenner said.
And so the survivors — many of whom spent months, years even — preparing to go public with the demons they met as children in the church are now silenced; twice victimized by an institution that spent untold resources avoiding justice.
Perspective | ‘My life was ruined’: A Catholic Church sexual abuse protest that has lasted 20 years
For decades, if people accused the clergy of abuse, churches across the country silenced them with money and quiet agreements. With the bankruptcy move, Lori is proposing a similar silence:
“Generally speaking, shortly after today’s filing, the bankruptcy court will begin to accept claims from victim-survivors for a specified period of time,” he wrote on Friday. “The Archdiocese and victim-survivors will then enter negotiations with the hope of agreeing to a plan that includes a trust fund to provide compensation. If a plan is approved by the bankruptcy court, no future claims for past cases of abuse can be brought against the Church.”
In other words, it’s not about the money.
It’s aboutsilence.
Jenner thought he’d be among those filing a wave of new cases on Sunday, a minute after midnight. Instead he filed just three. Two were by women in their 60s who were teenage students in the 1970s at the Key School in Annapolis when they were allegedly sexually abused by teachers.
And one was filed by David Schappelle, a 46-year-old Ellicott City man who was a father of five when he began to confront the intense sexual abuse he experienced as a 9-year-old at the St. Rose of Lima Parish in Gaithersburg. Because that parish is part of the Archdiocese of Washington, his case will be accepted.
“Now, I have a voice,” he said in a news conference on the day his suit was filed.
The same day, at the Basilica in Baltimore, the congregation listened to a reading from Philippians 2:1-11: “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not of his own interests, but also for those of others.”
Nothing is more important than healing those who were abused as children. It’s time for clergy to at long last chose the child over the church.