Church Battles Efforts to Ease Sex Abuse Suits

[HailStarofSea]

Originally Posted by SamH

Apparently the court didn't agree with your assessment since she lost her lawsuit.

Can you provide the source of information for this statement? It is certainly not in the articles that you are citing.

[SamH]

Originally Posted by HailStarofSea

Can you provide the source of information for this statement? It is certainly not in the articles that you are citing.

. When church lawyers then identified numerous falsehoods or inconsistencies in her claims of repressed memory, she turned around and sued her original attorney.

I guess I am assuming she lost after that was pointed out. It certainly would have taken some gall to have won in the face of that and then sued your own attorney for winning your case.

[Julia Mae]

Originally Posted by losh14

Actually, it was JimG who said that false claims had been paid. I said that false claims had been brought. Whether false claims had been paid, I'm not in a position to say..

My apologies, when the same thing gets quoted I sometimes lose track of who said what.

[He Man]

Originally Posted by dskysmine

Can you provide proof for that claim?
The limits on statutes passed do not say "but only if they are clerics".
The Church is the most attacked because it is the one that has more to lose given that a lot of the cases are old... it doesn't mean that the law is wrong.
And don't forget that the law in New York wouldn't pass retroactively like in California... it would only matter for future molestations. If the Church is seriously fighting to remove the "demons from the inside" this would be a good incentive for bishops not to hide these kinds of cases and hope they go away.

On page one, and from the article:

"In New York, the Catholic bishops said they would support a modest increase in the age of victims in criminal or civil cases, to 28. But their lobbying, along with that of ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders, has so far halted proposals that would allow a one-year window for civil suits for abuses from the past. The bishops say the provision unfairly targets the church because public schools, the site of much abuse, and municipalities have fought successfully to be exempted"

Doesn't seem like they actually care about abuse cases as much as they do bringing down the Church, because if they did, wouldn't they start with the places abuse occurs the most in terms of prosecution?

It's like saying you want to fix the deficit and cut spending, and you are going to start by cutting the administrative assitant for the under-Sceretary for the Interior's annual salary by 5%. Really?

[Julia Mae]

Originally Posted by He Man

. The bishops say the provision unfairly targets the church because public schools, the site of much abuse, and municipalities have fought successfully to be exempted..

The Bishops may spin it that way, but municipalities are almost always exempt from lawsuits. They are not exempt from criminal charges because those are leveled at individuals, not cities and towns. So the teachers or other employees if they are accused can be charged and civilly sued, just not the cities and towns held liable. This is because the city paying is actually the taxpayers paying.

A Diocese or Archdiocese is a private business, albeit a non-profit one. Still, they are subject to the same rules and law as any other business.

Sounds to me like a lot of adults in these areas have a lot of reasons to want to be able to pursue justice outside the present or older statute of limitations. Does it have much to do with the Catholic priest sexual assaults on children scandal? Probably a lot of impetus from that and then added push from the school districts which followed.

[OriginalJS]

Originally Posted by SamH

Did I say I was?


Actually I was wondering why this "concern" was directed only at the relatively small number of victims of the Catholic Church while ignoring the massive number of victims of the state.

Because when abuse becomes known in state agencies the abusers are punished; the Church spent decades denying the problem and abetting the abusers.

[InSearchofGrace]

Originally Posted by Julia Mae

It doesn't suggest anything, it's just a fact. One way to view this fact and it's difference from the population at large is that the potential victim pool comprised almost exclusively preadolescent boys: altar servers, at the time of the crimes. If girls had been historically as available, the numbers would easily look much more like the "norm" (ridiculous word to have to use in terms of this topic) in the general population of non-primary relative sexual assault of minors. In the case of priests, they assaulted the kids they had available.

Sexual assault is a crime of power and control, not a crime of unfulfilled sexual desire.

And the writers of the linked article did say in the beginning that abusing a child is a serious crime and a serious moral failing. (It goes without saying that this would be so whether the victim is a boy or a girl.)

However, the part of the article related to the line of discussion before I provided the link and is an interesting fact (to me anyway) was the statistic on false accusation and unsubstantiated allegation by plaintiffs who made claims of sex abuse against the priests, according to the fact finding study by John Jay college.

A little less than half of the priests (1881) were found to be subject to unsubstantiated allegations. An unsubstantiated allegation was defined as “an allegation that was proven to be untruthful and fabricated” as a result of a criminal investigation. This rate of false accusations is much higher than found in the general population.

Unscrupulous people and plaintiff attorneys were/are hoping the Catholic Church would cave even when they file completely bogus claims. Let's face it, cases in litigation are settled many times when the liaibility picture is unclear, or defensibility is deemed to be under 60% (insurance companies have varying claims practices) for some reason or another in the course of formal discovery, or when the plaintiff makes a better witness than the defense witness. I believe the mention of someone upthread that cases were probably settled by the Church before a systematic approach was used to defend all abuse cases, for economics or even in the absence of actual wrongdoing.
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[CMatt25]

Originally Posted by ellipsis2

I hope that no one is holding their breath. I really wish that the church would have fallen to their knees in shame and admitted what went on when it was discovered in Boston 10 years ago. So many were so ready to forgive and forget. Now, 10 years later it is still going on....in Ireland, in Austria, in Africa, in Philidelphia...where next?

Good point. People have to breath and if it's still going on as you say, they can't forget.

[SamH]

Originally Posted by OriginalJS

Because when abuse becomes known in state agencies the abusers are punished; the Church spent decades denying the problem and abetting the abusers.

Actually the Department of Education found that public schools practice "pass the predator" more than the Church ever did.

Outside of the Church, Shakeshaft is not alone in highlighting the largely unaddressed, and unpublicized problem of child sex abuse in schools. Sherryll Kraizer, executive director of the Denver-based Safe Child Program, told the Colorado Gazette in 2008 that school employees commonly ignore laws meant to prevent the sexual abuse of children.

“I see it regularly,” Kraizer said. “There are laws against failing to report, but the law is almost never enforced. Almost never.”

“What typically happens is you’ll have a teacher who’s spending a little too much time in a room with one child with the door shut,” Kraizer explained. “Another teacher sees it and reports it to the principal. The principal calls the suspected teacher in and says ‘Don’t do that,’ instead of contacting child protective services.”

“Before you know it, the teacher is driving the student home. A whole series of events will unfold, known to other teachers and the principal, and nobody contacts child services before it’s out of control. You see this documented in records after it eventually ends up in court.”

------------------------------------------

“Isn’t it news that the number of public school students who have been abused by a school employee is more than 100 times greater than the number of minors who have been abused by priests?” he asked.

“All those reporters, columnists, talking heads, attorneys general, D.A.‘s, psychologists and victims groups who were so quick on the draw to get priests have a moral obligation to pursue this issue to the max. If they don’t, they’re a fraud.”

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/arc...0/apr/10040101

The story contains a link to the study.

[SamH]

Originally Posted by ellipsis2

I hope that no one is holding their breath. I really wish that the church would have fallen to their knees in shame and admitted what went on when it was discovered in Boston 10 years ago. So many were so ready to forgive and forget. Now, 10 years later it is still going on....in Ireland, in Austria, in Africa, in Philidelphia...where next?

Any region of the world that has lawyers chasing money.