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	Church Played Part in Bill's Final Outcome By Jim Siegel jsiegel@dispatch.com The Columbus Dispatch [Ohio] April 2, 2006 http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch /2006/04/02/20060402-A1-03.html In March 2005, every Republican state senator in attendance voted to give victims a one-year window to sue for child sex abuse that occurred up to 35 years ago. This past week, all but one Republican House member voted against the measure, targeted mainly at abusive Catholic priests. There doesn't appear to be any single reason why members of the same party, meeting in chambers less than 50 yards apart, came to such starkly different conclusions about the controversial provision. But when a last-minute attempt at a deal fell apart, House Republicans stripped the so-called "look-back" provision from the bill and got the Senate to reluctantly go along with it. In the end, angry victims of sex abuse by priests said they were sold out, arguing that the window would give victims long-overdue justice and hold accountable church leaders who covered up the abuse and encouraged children not to tell their stories. But during a private meeting last Monday morning with House Speaker Jon A. Husted, leaders of the Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, agreed to drop their demand for the extended lawsuit window — as long as Catholic Church leaders agreed to release all of their records regarding allegations of sex abuse involving church leaders. Later that day, Husted took the idea to a meeting with Bishop Frederick Campbell, of the Columbus Diocese, Timothy Luckhaupt, of the Catholic Conference of Ohio, and Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, of the Cincinnati Archdiocese, who participated by phone. While they did not reject the idea outright, church leaders said they would need more time to run the plan past other bishops and church counsel. Although Husted told them to have their answer to him by Friday, he decided to move ahead the next day with passing the bill as scheduled. "It was clear to us after the discussion with the bishops that whatever they gave to us was not going to satisfy the SNAP people," said Scott Borgemenke, Husted's chief of staff. Husted is Catholic, according to the Catholic Conference of Ohio's Web site, as are 22 of the other 59 House Republicans. Barbara Blaine, president of SNAP, said she ran into Husted later Monday afternoon. She said he told her the bishops needed more time. Blaine said they were stalling, which was unacceptable. "Every step of the way they've said they needed more time," she said. Luckhaupt said it was not a stall tactic. "We have nine bishops. We could not get an answer in that short a period of time." Husted replaced the lookback with a new section giving victims the ability to place child-sex offenders on a public registry, if a judge finds the offender liable in a civil declaratory judgment. This, supporters argued, still provides a day in court, and allows the public to track those who escaped convictions because the statute of limitations ran out. Senate Republicans, after an emotional caucus meeting Wednesday, reluctantly concurred with the measure despite last year's 31-0 vote. If they didn't, members feared the House would refuse to continue debate and kill the entire bill. "There are some members in the Senate Republican caucus that have some concern that we are too often having to yield to the House because they say 'This is as far as we can go,' " said Sen. Jay Hottinger, R-Newark. The bill also became part of some deal making. Senate Republicans made sure that if they were going to accept the revamped Senate Bill 17, the House would have to go along with a Senate-altered bill giving townships more authority to regulate strip clubs. Back in early 2005, the Catholic Church testified in favor of Senate Bill 17, which at that time did not contain a lawsuit look-back. Sen. Jim Jordan, an Urbana Republican and chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said that before hearing the testimony, he did not think a look-back was necessary. But then he listened to hours of gut-wrenching stories by victims of child sex abuse by priests. Rarely does public testimony have a dramatic impact on a bill. This time, abuse victims convinced Jordan and other senators — who have spent the past several years passing bills to limit lawsuits — to give them a new chance to sue their perpetrators. When those same victims testified months later in the House, their impact was less. "I think if more House members actually heard the testimony and really studied the issue, there would have been a majority to pass it," said Sen. Patricia Clancy, a Cincinnati Republican. But some House Republicans said they simply spent more time looking at the consequences of the provision. "My guess is the Senate decided to just implement this to pass protections for children, and then let the House deal with that (look-back) issue," said Rep. Louis Blessing, R-Cincinnati, a member of the House committee that heard the bill. Blessing, who since 2000 has given more than $32,000 in campaign funds to a Cincinnati-area Catholic church and two Catholic schools, said he was concerned that the look-back was unconstitutional and would cause major problems for the insurance industry. Rep. Bill Seitz, an influential Cincinnati Republican who was key in crafting the civil registry to replace the lookback, said that in the past five or six years, "we have tried to reduce the opportunities for civil-damage litigation." Following that principle, he said, the House "would not be inclined to open up previous stale civil-damage lawsuits going back 35 years." While Catholic Church leaders didn't have much time to react in the Senate, where the look-back was amended into Senate Bill 17 and passed by the full chamber in the same day, they were well-prepared to fight it in the House. Soon after the bill passed the Senate, they sat down with Husted for a private meeting. The chamber leader can have enormous impact on a bill's fate, and unlike Senate President Bill M. Harris, R-Ashland, Husted did not support the look-back provision. Church leaders began looking for an alternative — a public registry. Bishops met with other members. Campbell gave unprecedented testimony before a House committee. Numerous calls were made, right up until the day before the final House vote. Legislative Democrats voted to retain the look-back provision, but still heard church officials' case. "When the bishop calls, you listen," said Rep. Chris Redfern, of Catawba Island, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, who said Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair called him Tuesday. "It goes to the respect we all hold for our churches, whether we're Catholics, Lutherans or Jews."
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