ATLANTA (GA)
Courthouse News Service [Boston, MA]
September 4, 2025
By Megan Butler
The victims say the Archdiocese of Atlanta knew about priests sexually abusing children in the late ’70s and actively concealed it.
ATLANTA (CN) — A group of 12 men who say they were sexually abused as children by Catholic priests argued to an appeals court Thursday that the church should be liable for concealing the abuse.
The plaintiffs claimed Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church knew its priests belonging to archdioceses across the country had a history of sexually abusing children, yet engaged in a “systematic cover-up effort” to conceal the danger the priests posed to minor parishioners, even as they encouraged them to serve as altar boys under the supervision of such priests.
The Archdiocese of Atlanta argued the men’s claims are time-barred because the abusive acts took place during the late 1970s and ‘80s. Under Georgia law, if a minor is subjected to sexual abuse, the general two-year statute of limitations is tolled until they turn 18.
“What did he do in those 36 years? What did any of these plaintiffs do in the decades between?” Attorney Dana Marie Richens told the court.
“These plaintiffs did nothing,” she added.
But according to the men, they had no knowledge the church knew its priests had been accused of molesting children until Nov. 6, 2018, when Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory formally acknowledged it by releasing a list of priests with “credible” accusations of sexual abuse of minors since 1956.
This list included Father Douglas Edwards, who was accused of frequently molesting the boys at his Georgia lake house and had served at nine different Catholic churches and had taken a yearlong leave of absence.
“This recent discovery of the truth of the Archdiocese of Atlanta’s decadeslong cover-up of the grave problem of its priests sexually abusing parishioners throughout the state of Georgia tore open old wounds, ripped apart old scars and traumatized Plaintiff all over again,” one of the men wrote in their complaint.
Thursday marked the second time the case has come before the Georgia Court of Appeals. A divided panel previously upheld a dismissal of the claims, concluding that even assuming the church had fraudulently concealed its knowledge of dangerous priests, it could not toll the limitation period because the plaintiffs already knew the identity of the abuser and had not “exercised reasonable diligence to discover his causes of action.”
But the Georgia Supreme Court ruled the men could introduce evidence of fraud to toll the limitation period as to their claims that the church failed to supervise its employees and breached its duty to protect the minor parishioners from harm.
The trial court once again dismissed the men’s claims, ruling they failed to show “any affirmative act” of deception by the church that could have dissuaded them from pursuing potential claims sooner.
“The lack of disclosure is all that matters,” one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Michael Terry, told the court.
Judges Brian Rickman, Elizabeth Gobeil and Jeffrey Davis contemplated how the men could have exercised “reasonable diligence” in looking to hold the church liable.
“How would that play out practically? What would reasonable diligence be when trying to get the church to disclose what they know?” Rickman asked Richens.
The church’s attorney said the men could have started investigating and questioning the church sooner, while Terry contended that they were deterred and misled by the archdioceses, which attempted to hide the abuse by moving around the priests to different churches.
Gobeil noted there could be a difference between what they knew regarding the perpetrator and the degree to which they knew about the church’s involvement.
Just months before Archbishop Gregory released the list of priests, Georgia lawmakers sought to allow more victims of childhood sexual abuse to file civil lawsuits by extending the statute of limitations.
But amid lobbying efforts to kill the legislation from the archdiocese and the Boy Scouts of America, the bill was watered down and ultimately failed to be enacted into law in its intended form.