By Mary DeTurris Poust

Church facing new floods of lawsuits nationwide

Bills would eliminate statute of limitations -- except for public institutions like schools

From Maryland and Wisconsin to Colorado and Alaska, state legislators and trial attorneys are on the move, trying to push through legislation that will roll back the civil statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases against private institutions, like the Catholic Church, while leaving public entities, like public school systems and government agencies, unchecked.

In what has become an annual event, state legislatures around the nation are reviving efforts to suspend the statutes of limitations, opening up one- and two-year-windows that would allow people to sue over sexual abuse allegations dating back 30, 40, even 70 years, often against alleged perpetrators who are already dead. Church experts on this topic argue that current legislation unfairly targets the Catholic Church by ignoring the high rate of sexual abuse cases that have been documented in public institutions, especially public schools.

Statutes of limitations are legal time limits intended to protect people and ensure fair trials while memories are still fresh, evidence is still available and witnesses are still alive.

Currently legislation is pending in nine states, and has been enacted in two, Delaware in 2007 and California in 2003. The one-year window on time-barred cases in California resulted in some 800 claims totaling close to $1 billion in payments -- and counting.

Archbishop Edwin O'Brien of Baltimore, who is battling statute- of-limitations legislation in Maryland, told Our Sunday Visitor that opening up time-barred claims that in many cases involve accusations against people who are long dead is a "travesty" of justice and noted that trial lawyers take, on average, between 35-40 percent of the financial settlements made to victims.

He echoed the concerns of other Catholics fighting similar battles, saying that the proposed legislation does nothing to protect children, rehabilitate those who have been affected, increase awareness of child abuse, promote counseling, toughen criminal penalties or mandate background checks for volunteers and employees, as is now standard operating procedure in the Catholic Church.

"This legislation is not going to help the victims. It's going to help trial lawyers," Archbishop O'Brien said."If help is necessary to rehabilitate (those affected by abuse)," he continued, "we are willing to go as far as we must and we have done so, and the Church in the United States has done so. That's where our money should go: rehabilitation and prevention. To any extent, the Catholic Church in the United States is willing to do that."

'Passing trash'

Francis Maier, chancellor for the Archdiocese of Denver who was on the front lines of a successful bid to beat back a 2006 push for statute-of-limitations legislation in Colorado, is now facing a renewed push to get such legislation through. He said that while the new Colorado legislation is almost identical to its failed predecessor, the environment is significantly different, in part, because people are more aware of the prevalence of sexual abuse that has occurred and continues to occur in public institutions.

"What has emerged in the past two years is that every single point the bishops made has been confirmed in print by The Associated Press and a dozen other secular news media," he told Our Sunday Visitor.

Just this month The Oregonian newspaper reported that it had uncovered secret deals between school systems and sexually abusive teachers. Accused teachers were quietly allowed to move to other school districts, something the paper said is so widespread not just in Oregon but across the country that it has a nickname: "passing the trash." Cash settlements, promises of letters of recommendation and other perks were offered in exchange for the alleged abusers' quiet resignations.

And the problems in Oregon are by no means unique. An Associated Press investigative series in October 2007 found more than 2,500 cases of sexual abuse in public schools over only a five-year-period where educators were punished for what the report called "actions from bizarre to sadistic."

Comparatively, the U.S. bishops reported 4,400 accusations of child sexual abuse over a period of 52 years. The AP report said that it found three sexual abuse incidents in public schools nationwide for every day of the school year and said that the public school system is "stacked against victims."

"Our argument would be, as it was two years ago," Maier said, "that this isn't a different problem than Catholic institutions from public institutions. It's the same problem, and since it's the same problem, in fairness to the children and their parents, the same solution must be imposed on all institutions, which means the same penalties, the same procedures, the same fines, and the same reporting parameters. Anything less than that is inadequate and prejudicial," Maier said.

Disparity in justice

Jennifer Kraska, the newly appointed executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference who recently testified in opposition to the state's HB 1011, said that any legislation in this area, regardless of where it's being promoted or who's promoting it, must meet three criteria: It must be fair by making public and private entities subject to the same rules; it must be preventative by ensuring that future occurrences of sexual abuse are less likely, and it must never be retroactive because that approach is "inherently unfair" and does nothing to prevent abuse.

"A lot of these bills are being touted as protecting children and really, if you examine those three criteria in regard to any statute of limitation law, at least the ones that I know of, they just don't meet those criteria," Kraska said.

In Colorado, lawmakers are pushing a plan for separate legislation for public institutions, saying that it will, in effect, hold private and public entities to the same standards, but Kraska called the claim "disingenuous," saying that the law for public schools opens no window on time-barred abuse cases.

"In the public school legislation that we have in Colorado right now, there's no retroactivity, there's no way for somebody who was abused 50 years ago in a public school to bring that claim forward," she explained. "Basically the message that the community should be getting and the public should be getting is that childhood sexual abuse that occurs in a private institution is more important than childhood sexual abuse that occurs in a public institution. It's just bad public policy."

The Church is battling similar legislation in Wisconsin, where two proposed bills would expand or remove the statute of limitation on child sex abuse cases. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee testified before a state Senate committee that, if enacted, the legislation would not only punish innocent Catholics but would "kneecap or even eliminate" Church programs that serve the poor. As in other states, the Wisconsin law would not impact public entities, which are protected by "sovereign immunity" that typically includes tight time restraints on filing claims and severe financial caps on jury awards.

Archbishop O'Brien of Baltimore also decided to take his argument against such legislation public, using his column in The Catholic Review and a question-and-answer sheet distributed in every parish to educate the Catholic public on what the Church sees as a disparity in justice between private and public entities in the Maryland legislation that would open up a one-year window on time-barred cases.

Mary DeTurris Poust is a contributing editor to Our Sunday Visitor.