LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Daily Beast
October 3, 2018
By Pilar Melendez
In an effort to compel officials to release clergy-abuse records, a new lawsuit filed Tuesday targets dozens of priests, all California bishops, and the Archdiocese of Chicago.
A clergy-abuse survivor is putting his state on notice, suing all of California’s 12 Catholic bishops and naming more than two dozen accused sexual-predator priests in an effort to compel church officials to be more transparent.
In a complaint filed in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Thomas Emens alleged a “civil conspiracy” among clergy officials to cover up sexual assault within the church, claiming they avoided conflict by simply moving accused priests to other parishes across the country.
“This lawsuit is really the only opportunity I have at this time to find justice not just for myself to bring all the victims that are in the shadows out and to help them moving forward,” Emens said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit. “This lawsuit is also to get the clerics at the top to come clean and tell the truth.”
Emens alleged both at the news conference and lawsuit—that he was sexually abused for two years starting in 1978, when he was 10 years old, at the hands of Monsignor Thomas Joseph Mohan.
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