I found this little blurb about the U.S. bankruptcy judge who is presiding over the bankruptcy of the San Diego RC Diocese. I must admit it makes me a little nervous.
Louise De Carl-Adler is a judge of the U.S.
Bankruptcy Court. She came from a modest
background, which, without help from
scholarships, would not have permitted her
to go to college. She entered the legal
profession at a time when women lawyers
were rare and discrimination against them
rampant. Because of her background, she
strongly supports causes which promote and
protect the education, health, and the
reproductive freedom of women.
(Emphasis added.) Of course, just because somebody is a big supporter of abortion rights does not mean they have anything against the Catholic Church. But the Diocese has, to say the least, been getting a rather hard time from the judge, which is not to say it does not deserve the same; I haven't followed the case closely enough to really know:
SAN DIEGO – In a blistering, six-page statement, a judge is threatening to throw the San Diego Catholic diocese's bankruptcy case out of court because of a financial report that found problems ranging from parishes withholding money to the diocese failing to report the fair market value of properties.
I am just wondering out loud here whether Judge De Carl-Adler might not be the biggest fan in the world of the Catholic Church, and whether that makes a difference in this case. But I suppose a bankruptcy judge with, oh, a degree in canon law from the Gregorian University would be a lot to hope for. And also, the facts of priestly sexual abuse may be so dreadful, that starting out as a fan or not of the RC church would not make much a difference in the end. Maybe the facts are so prejudicial that any extra little prejudice would not matter. (Check out the comments after the SD U-T article linked to above if you want a taste of the ugly anti-Catholic animus provoked by this case. Sure, an' it reminds me of the days, like in me own town of Boise, back in the '30's, when, or so my parents told me, the Klan burned crosses in the front yards of the Cat'lics, perhaps partly for want of African-Americans and Jews.)
Having raised this delicate subject, I will note more substantively that my problem is also that not much weight seems to be given, in the press accounts at least, and as far as I can tell, to the fact that the assets of the parishes really are separate from one another and the diocese, in practice, though perhaps not in law. At least they are supposed to be.
For example, I gave some modest (and I mean modest) amount of money to help build an education building at the parish where my kids go to school. I was to get a brick with my name on it. But now I am given to understand that that money is just gone, poof!, sucked into the maw of this case. I suspect any effort by the parish to stop this from happening would be part of what the judge and her independent expert are outraged about, though possibly less benign maneuvers as well. But, if we assume the Diocese is not supposed to start closing down some of the best schools in this educationally-challenged county so as to pay the sex abuse victims, and their lawyers, just how exactly is that aspiration to be accounted for? If that is what the Diocese is trying to do (and as I said, I don't know, nor would any diligent reader of the Union-Tribune), would that be consistent with what the judge wants of them, or would that just get the Diocese into more trouble? Is anybody weighing, from a policy perspective, how to balance the interests of sex abuse victims from the last century against the school kids of this century?
Don't get me wrong; if anybody, priest or otherwise, rapes a child, I think life in prison is too good for such a miscreant. My late father, a judge in Idaho, sent a Catholic priest to the Idaho State Penitentiary for child molestation, from which he was lucky to emerge alive. But if you were a sexual abuse victim, would you really say, I should get $1 million (and my lawyer a third to a half of that) even if it means closing down the school at Our Lady of the Poor and dropping those three hundred kids into schools where they wont learn to read? I'm not sure what the word for that would be, some sort of reckoning perhaps, but justice it ain't.
I understand quite well that the Diocese is one corporation, which makes one wonder if the plaintiffs' bar was not somehow consulted in the constitution of the Catholic Church. A fatter target for litigation can hardly be imagined. It means money given to a church in the desert east of San Diego in 2007 can be tapped to compensate a man who was molested a 90 minute drive away 50 years ago by a priest who is now dead. I call this form over substance, but then as a Catholic I am used to living with things that don't make a lot of sense. But then again, maybe this whole sorry business will encourage the American church to revisit how it is, as a legal matter, organized.
But I will say this. Some time ago I read that the plaintiffs' lawyers were complaining that some assets dedicated to some Catholic purpose or other were in corporations separate from the Diocese, but that they should be able to get at those assets too. But wait a minute. Some parish in East Cactus that didn't even exist in 1960 is on the hook to the plaintiffs because it is part of the Diocese as a matter of corporate law. But some foundation or other entity that is not part of the Diocese is also on the hook because what, it does Catholic stuff? If it's going to be form over substance when it helps the plaintiffs, it ought to be form over substance when it hurts the plaintiffs as well. But, as I say, I am expressing this anxiety based on inferences I'm making from press reports, so I could be worrying for nothing.
I should protest again my ignorance, and stress of course that I am speaking only for myself here and certainly not for the Holy Father, the Diocese of San Diego, the independent Catholic university that happens to employ me, the parish where I often am not to be found on Sundays, let alone God or his holy angels. I am just expressing skepticism that the Diocese is getting a fair shake, at least from the Union-Tribune and the L.A. Times, and maybe not even from the bankruptcy judge. Skepticism, that's all. For example, has the judge, her expert or anyone explained how the Diocese is supposed to pay $140 million (or whatever) to the sexual abuse plaintiffs (and their lawyers, who will get a very significant cut) and still keep their schools and churches running? Has anyone been given the leeway to produce a plan that would allow this? When we are told (by the plaintiffs' attorneys) that the Diocese has money enough to pay what the plaintiffs demand, is this taking into account the schools, parishes, educational programs and so on that the various parishes support? Has anyone besides the Diocese even looked at that? Is all that just chopped liver? What I mean to say is, is there any chance I'm going to get my brick?
When I was in practice I worked on the asbestos mass tort bankruptcies (on the defendants' side) and my first major law review article was about mass tort bankruptcy. I have thought about mass tort bankruptcy as deeply as anybody should. For clarity, Aquinas on angels is much to be preferred. For a while, allow me to boast, it looked like an institution I designed might even be used in the Dow Corning bankruptcy, or at least I was called by the bankruptcy judge in that case, before the creditors committee crushed that idea, and yanked the matter up to the federal district court to make sure the future plaintiffs were not, ah, over -represented. Anyone who has seen mass tort bankruptcy up close knows that to call the process merely imperfect is naive in the extreme. You have many people, some real and some abstract, all with incommensurable claims on a pot of money that is perhaps impossible to define, except to say there is not nearly enough to go around. The process tends to be taken over by those with the most vivid claims, at the expense of those with interests that are equal to those of the plaintiffs, or at least deserve some weight. The only thing you can bet on is that the lawyers will get rich.
Is that what is going to happen in the sexual abuse mass tort matter in the San Diego Diocese? I don't know, but it is surely a question worth asking. In this case, the interests that I worry may be underrepresented are those of the current and future parishioners who have churches and schools they want to keep running. And yes, the children that quite apart from any purely religious interest (which also deserves some weight) benefit from these institutions. I have paid for my brick, I read the papers, and I am not reassured.
STEVE BAINBRIDGE addresses some of legal issues of separate incorporation (and failure to do so) here. I think it is high time for the Church to take seriously the idea of every parish being separately incorporated. Surely every school should be.
If, as a legal matter, the good works of the church are torn down paying for the collective sexual abuse scandal, then it is the church fathers who are to blame when they colluded to cover up the scandal, to move molesting priests around, and to walk right up to the line of an active conspiracy to sexually abuse children. It may not feel like justice on a case-by-case basis when you equate one abused child's settlement with one needed school closing down, but in the end it was the orchestration of bishops and archbishops that tied the two together, not the legal system.
Posted by: JJ | August 11, 2007 at 05:08 PM
I don't mean to pile on but I detect in your mind a separation between aberrant priests and the Church, and from either a moral or legal perspective it's hard to allow for that separation. The institution was deeply complicit in the crimes, extensively and over a long period, so I don't see the relevance of context like "a 90 minute drive away 50 years ago by a priest who is now dead".
Posted by: anon | August 11, 2007 at 07:34 PM
as one of those "abused" for 7 years by a priest, the ONLY reason you, as a catholic are paying attention is because you may lose something as a result of Brom's & Mahony's coverup. Your skepticism & or anger should be directed at them, and until all RC in San Diego start asking them why they covered it up, it is my hope EVERY asset is closed! Then you will really begin to know how we as survivors feel!
Posted by: Abused | August 11, 2007 at 08:38 PM
1) It is certainly true that the abusive priests and anybody who was complicit in their behavior are responsible for these crimes. I would be fine with anybody who committed these crimes being criminally liable to the full extent of the criminal law. The question is what churches and groups of people widely separated in time and space from the crimes have to do with the culpable acts. The answer is, beyond the mysteries of the corporation sole, in this case, not much. It is an artifact of the arcane way in which the Catholic Church is organized, that the consequences in this case are so counter-intuitive. Even beyond that, the attitude I detect in some commentators is, because of the heinousness of the crimes involved, where the law requires the Diocese be liable, that should be the result, and where the law needs to be changed to reach that result, that should be done too.
For those of you out of the loop on the corporate law of this, the RC Church is organized so that the bishop, as a "corporation sole", ( http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_4_39/ai_94596510 ), a human being who is also a corporation, actually owns, personally-as-a-corporation-sole, all the assets of the Diocese or Arch-Diocese. This odd legal duck is the result of the evolution of the English common law of ecclesiastical entities, and had much to do with the passage of church property. Thus if a rouge priest in Temecula abuses a child, you can go after the land under a school in Bonita. The parishes operate in nearly all respects independently, but their organization under a single corporate personality makes all the assets of the Diocese vulnerable. This, in my view, explains much about why the RC church is much more the target of abuse suits than many other organizations, which are not organized in this way, but which there is reason to believe have comparable levels of tortious sexual abuse.
2) Whether the Church was "deeply complicit" in crimes is a question of fact that would be resolved in individual trials, if they were to held, which in most cases, they will not. Like most mass torts, the alleged crimes, which vary a lot in terms of seriousness and supportability, will be resolved by mass settlements where who gets what is more a matter of administrative convenience and negotiating position, than a matter of a preponderance of the evidence and the judgment of a jury. In this as in many torts, it is far cheaper to settle a case than litigate it. All this is a matter for negotiation, so we don't really know if there were 140 victims abused by priests, or more, or less, and how good or bad those cases are. Having to settle these cases puts the Church, or so it seems to me, in an impossible position respecting public opinion. But how many plaintiffs there actually are goes to the question of whether the settlement should be 50 million, 100 million, 200 million or whatever. A million dollars makes a big difference, however, in terms of the work of the Church. Given that a settlement of mass torts is rough justice at best, the least you can do is consider all the interests affected.
As to the relevance of time and distance, if you can't see how people who were not born when these crimes occurred are rather difficult to blame for them, I don't know what to say. What I am saying is, if there is no way you can factually connect a particular parish, group of people, school and so on, with the crimes in question, then I don't see what the moral argument is for taking their money to atone for the crimes. I realize this assumes a parish owns its school, not the Bishop. The Bishop owns it as a matter of law, but whose property rights should be recognized in an equitable setting, such as bankruptcy, ought to be, in my view, another matter. My parish, for example, did not exist when the vast majority of these crimes were committed and had nothing to do as far as I know with any of them. The area that is now suburbs served by my parish, was lemon groves, cow pastures, and scrub when the crimes were committed. Why money we contributed to build a building should be scooped away to pay for the crimes in question, as a matter of actual moral responsibility, is beyond me. That this result might nevertheless follow from the intersection of an obscure branch of corporate law and the vagaries of tort litigation, I understand only too well. That doesn't make it right or just. But, if judges can reach just results through the legitimate exercise of their discretion, they should do so. In this case, I think justice requires weighing interests other than just those of the abuse victims, if it is legally possible to do so, and in the bankruptcy setting, it usually is possible to weigh many different competing interests.
3) Being the victim of a crime gives one no special authority as to how the law ought to deal with it as a matter of jurisprudence. Having had a family member murdered, for example, should not put one on the list of experts to be consulted in the revision of the Model Penal Code. Nor does being the victim of sexual abuse make one an expert on bankruptcy or tort law. The comment to the effect that, I was abused, therefore all the RC Church's assets ought to be taken, makes that as clear as anything can. It's not about how survivors feel, at least the law part isn't.
Indeed, feelings are so difficult to measure that I am very skeptical about the whole idea of monetary damages for pain and suffering, though I am well aware this is something tort theorists spend a lot of time thinking about, and plaintiffs' lawyers a lot of time pursuing. For my money, criminal law is the best way to address acts that wrongly cause pain and suffering, and tort law is best thought of as an insurance scheme. But where the law of torts does take on the ineffable task of compensating pain and suffering, or punishing wrongs with punitive damages, and these damages grow so great as to put the debtor into insolvency, it is obviously sound policy to weigh these compensatory goals, baffling as they are, against other policy objectives, such as not putting valuable social institutions out of business. The law of bankruptcy, which is mostly equity anyway, leaves room to do this, and it has been done, at least judging from press reports, in other RC Diocese bankruptcy cases. I hope it is done in this case as well, though there is reason to worry it wont be.
Posted by: tom smith | August 11, 2007 at 10:14 PM
It is not simply a matter of lone rogue priests committing a crime. It is also a matter of cardinals protecting these priests, sending them to other parishes to commit crimes again, and going to extraordinary lengths to hide evidence of those crimes. I think that you could speak about your parish's independence only if it were also a separate and independent church.
In an ideal world, Cardinal Mahoney and the other cardinals who tried to sweep the pedophile priest issue under the rug would themselves be swept out of their positions. Aside from this, if the Catholic Church does not give up all records of offending priests, it should lose its tax exempt status, and all assets, including the contributions of its followers should be seized under the RICO act.
Posted by: Alec | August 12, 2007 at 12:14 AM
First: Anyone who abuses a child or young person should get prosecuted to the extent of the law.
Second: Anyone who aids and abets said person(s), should get same.
Now that that's out of the way, all those who think they deserve to get a million plus dollars for being abused, think for a second about what you are willingly doing to the children of today. You are willingly saying that your new Porsche is more important than them getting a basic education. You are, by your actions, imposing punishment on young, vulnerable children for the crimes allegedly committed by old men. (Before I get hammered for the "allegedly", I use the term in the sense of everyone being innocent until proven guilty", not to diminish anyone's culpability) (Yes, I know some have been found guilty, some have not)
So yes, the blame for the Diocese' legal position can be laid at the feet of the Bishops who aided and abetted, but if apportionment of the blame, and accontability for the crimes is what is sought, why is the dollar figure there?
Posted by: Tugboat | August 12, 2007 at 06:09 AM
And oh, yes, I forgot. Tom, please keep your rhetorical hands off the bike.
Posted by: Tugboat | August 12, 2007 at 06:10 AM
You guys seem to think that it's a choice between paying the victims of sexual assault or keeping the schools open. There is another alternative: the Catholic Church (like the one in Rome) could take responsibility for its complicity and actually come up with the money to do both. If they don't have the cash on hand, well, they could auction off a few rare manuscripts, paintings, or tapestries owned by the church.
Or is it anti-Catholic bigotry to observe that the Catholic Church as a whole is indeed fabulously wealthy?
Posted by: Cheerful Iconoclast | August 12, 2007 at 07:46 AM
When you turn that logic about hurting the "youth of today" to those who knew and covered it up (& I mean it goes ALL the way up to ratzinger ... or should I say "the Pope) THEN and only THEN will your concern and hopefully anger be matched by mine and other survivors. Get them out of positions of continued cover-ups and we would finally be on a path of healing. But until you do that you are just as complicit by not putting them in the spotlight where the true eyes belong.
Posted by: anon | August 12, 2007 at 07:50 AM
"Is anybody weighing, from a policy perspective, how to balance the interests of sex abuse victims from the last century against the school kids of this century?" That isn't the business of the judge, is it?
Posted by: dearieme | August 12, 2007 at 07:59 AM
RE: First: Anyone who abuses a child or young person should get prosecuted to the extent of the law.
Second: Anyone who aids and abets said person(s), should get same.
The people who aid and abet pedophile priests include the so-called faithful who put the Church above justice and mercy. The problem with those who question monetary settlements is that they cannot deal with their own denial. In the vast majority of cases that went to trial, juries found sufficient evidence to convict pedophile priests. Let this sink in a second. The Boston Globe, as an example, has done an excellent job in documenting various priest abuse cases around the country and its series may still be available on the web.
In Los Angeles, for example, as a result of court victories elsewhere, Cardinal Mahoney went out of his way to hide priests, send them to other cities where they offended again, and then hid evidence of the abuse and hired high-priced public relation firms to muddy the waters in an attempt to convince the gullible that the problem was minor and the Church was contrite. This has been the case in other areas as well, and their is clear evidence that the Vatican has also been complicit in attempting to minimize the importance of priest abuse cases.
For example, Cardinal Mahoney claimed that "today we know how horrible abuse is, but we didn't know this 20 years ago," as a way of excusing sending offending priests to therapy instead of prison. So, he is saying that in 1987 the Catholic Church did not know that it was a crime for priests to rape boys. And apparently this nonsense is acceptable to many of the church faithful.
The monetary settlements are a last resort, the only way that the Church can continue to protect pedophile priests, keep them out of prison, and to keep the extent of abuse out of the public record.
There is another dimension to this as well. The church hierarchy clearly believes that a call to the priesthood grants a priest immunity against some heinous crimes. And the church hierarchy clearly believes that protecting the church and making sure that it continue is more important than the lives and the psyches of thousands of innocents.
And sadly, many of the Church faithful are willing to aid and abet this cynical and hypocritical sacrifice of the victims of priest abuse. It is more important to them to have a church to go to and a school to send their kids than it is to actually behave like a Christian.
The Church hierarchy has benefited greatly from the complacency of Catholics, who are well trained to obey priests even when they are physically and financially sodomizing them.
Posted by: Alec | August 12, 2007 at 10:43 AM
Don't make the assumption that I am Catholic. I am not. I am merely asking, person to person, that those demanding money at any cost consider someone else. Yes, it sucks that bad stuff happened to you when you were young. Lots of people have bad things happen to them that are totally undeserved. We get over it and drive on. I support the harshest possible punishments for molesters and rapists; those involving belt-sanders and wood-chippers. I will hand you the freaking ROPE when one is found guilty, and I support no one who wants to hide them. But demanding money that you KNOW will cost children a chance at a decent education, in the name of "justice"... that I will NOT support.
Posted by: Tugboat | August 12, 2007 at 11:25 AM
Alec, it only costs children a chance at a decent eduction because the Catholic Church arranges its affairs that way. As I noted in my earlier comment, the church is fabulously wealthy. It could easily sell assets such as the manuscripts and art in the Vatican Library and Vatican Museums. This money could be used to pay settlements while allowing good works to continue.
I mean, you're on your moral high horse about the kids being denied an education, but you don't seem at all concerned about the Vatican hierarchy (including the current pope) which aided and abetted this sort of abuse.
Posted by: Cheerful Iconoclast | August 12, 2007 at 11:48 AM
tugboat - RE: Don't make the assumption that I am Catholic. I am not. I am merely asking, person to person, that those demanding money at any cost consider someone else.
You are wrong on two critical counts. I don't assume that you are Catholic. And it is not true that priest abuse victims demanded money. In Los Angeles, the Catholic Church offered a settlement in excess of $600 million when they began losing their final appeals to keep some church records relating to abuse sealed. They offered hush money to keep priests from being prosecuted and to keep Church complicity about the extent of the abuse out of the public record.
From my perspective, Catholics should have demanded that Mahoney and others who aided and abetted pedophile priests be removed from office. Catholics should have demanded that all records relating to pedophile priests be brought forward. Catholics and non-Catholics should have demanded that Mahoney and others who aided and abetted pedophile priests be prosecuted.
I note that in Boston, over 50 priests signed a letter declaring "no confidence" in Cardinal Law and asked him to resign. And despite his subsequent resignation, he was later appointed to a number of authoritative positions in Rome by Pope John Paul II. And despite the fines and settlements paid as a result of the Boston case, the church hierarchy set about trying to minimize the impact of future investigations.
RE: Yes, it sucks that bad stuff happened to you when you were young. Lots of people have bad things happen to them that are totally undeserved. We get over it and drive on. I support the harshest possible punishments for molesters and rapists...
Actually, you don't support the harshest possible punishment. Your attitude aligns quite nicely with Church tactics, which has been to delay justice for as long as possible, and then to ask at the last possible moment, with crocodile tears dripping from their faces, "All of this happened so long ago. Can't we just move on?"
RE: But demanding money that you KNOW will cost children a chance at a decent education, in the name of "justice"... that I will NOT support.
Your argument is not with abuse victims. Your argument is with the Church, which clearly prefers to pay money to abuse victims than to allow the prosecution of the molesters and rapists in its ranks. Obviously, the education of children is not one of their higher priorities.
Cheerful - RE: I mean, you're on your moral high horse about the kids being denied an education, but you don't seem at all concerned about the Vatican hierarchy (including the current pope) which aided and abetted this sort of abuse.
Actually, I have been pretty clear in my condemnation of the Church hierarchy. I think if more of these people saw jail time or disgrace, less money would have to be poured out in the form of settlements.
As an aside, I became alienated from a dear friend, a very devout Catholic, who flatly told our group of friends that she would never criticize the Church or ever do anything to assist priest abuse victims because she would see it as a betrayal of the Church. She felt sorry for them, but her loyalty to the Church was paramount. And this, presumably, would include any contemporary child whose "decent education" included rape by priests. As long as it was a priest doing it, she would never lift a hand to stop it or to prevent it.
Posted by: Alec | August 12, 2007 at 01:21 PM
tugboat - RE: Don't make the assumption that I am Catholic. I am not. I am merely asking, person to person, that those demanding money at any cost consider someone else.
You are wrong on two critical counts. I don't assume that you are Catholic. And it is not true that priest abuse victims demanded money. In Los Angeles, the Catholic Church offered a settlement in excess of $600 million when they began losing their final appeals to keep some church records relating to abuse sealed. They offered hush money to keep priests from being prosecuted and to keep Church complicity about the extent of the abuse out of the public record.
From my perspective, Catholics should have demanded that Mahoney and others who aided and abetted pedophile priests be removed from office. Catholics should have demanded that all records relating to pedophile priests be brought forward. Catholics and non-Catholics should have demanded that Mahoney and others who aided and abetted pedophile priests be prosecuted.
I note that in Boston, over 50 priests signed a letter declaring "no confidence" in Cardinal Law and asked him to resign. And despite his subsequent resignation, he was later appointed to a number of authoritative positions in Rome by Pope John Paul II. And despite the fines and settlements paid as a result of the Boston case, the church hierarchy set about trying to minimize the impact of future investigations.
RE: Yes, it sucks that bad stuff happened to you when you were young. Lots of people have bad things happen to them that are totally undeserved. We get over it and drive on. I support the harshest possible punishments for molesters and rapists...
Actually, you don't support the harshest possible punishment. Your attitude aligns quite nicely with Church tactics, which has been to delay justice for as long as possible, and then to ask at the last possible moment, with crocodile tears dripping from their faces, "All of this happened so long ago. Can't we just move on?"
RE: But demanding money that you KNOW will cost children a chance at a decent education, in the name of "justice"... that I will NOT support.
Your argument is not with abuse victims. Your argument is with the Church, which clearly prefers to pay money to abuse victims than to allow the prosecution of the molesters and rapists in its ranks. Obviously, the education of children is not one of their higher priorities.
Cheerful - RE: I mean, you're on your moral high horse about the kids being denied an education, but you don't seem at all concerned about the Vatican hierarchy (including the current pope) which aided and abetted this sort of abuse.
Actually, I have been pretty clear in my condemnation of the Church hierarchy. I think if more of these people saw jail time or disgrace, less money would have to be poured out in the form of settlements.
As an aside, I became alienated from a dear friend, a very devout Catholic, who flatly told our group of friends that she would never criticize the Church or ever do anything to assist priest abuse victims because she would see it as a betrayal of the Church. She felt sorry for them, but her loyalty to the Church was paramount. And this, presumably, would include any contemporary child whose "decent education" included rape by priests. As long as it was a priest doing it, she would never lift a hand to stop it or to prevent it.
Posted by: Alec | August 12, 2007 at 01:22 PM
Tom,
You said..
>>But if you were a sexual abuse victim, would you really say, I should get $1 million (and my lawyer a third to a half of that) even if it means closing down the school at Our Lady of the Poor and dropping those three hundred kids into schools where they wont learn to read? I'm not sure what the word for that would be, some sort of reckoning perhaps, but justice it ain't.<<
This is ultimately what it always boils down to, the juxtaposition of school closings and justice for the victims.
How much is fair? You tell me. I am a victim, raped at age 16. I made an immediate police report, and passed a polygraph.
To deal with the pain I began heavily using substances. I dropped out of school. My parents were not the best, and predatory priests have a history of targeting such children.
Substance abuse itself brings on a myriad of other difficulties. My 20s blurred by. Most of my 30's did as well. I began to straighten out and finally attended school, but I was hamstrung professionally due to some issues with authority that I could not deal with effectively. Before long I'm 40 and the clergy abuse crisis is on TV every night. I learn that the priest who raped me was not prosecuted after the bishop visited the DA. Suddenly I have anxiety attacks and I can't work. I self medicate to sleep and lose my professional license over a drug test.
At 40 I'm back to minimum wage.
I never wanted a million dollars. All I ever wanted was a compassionate church to help me deal with the issues caused by being raped by one of their own. It is clear now that I will never get either, my case was dismissed because the arrest reports of previous incidents with the priest in question "disappeared".
My IQ has been tested at 126 and all during school teachers told me I could anything I wanted. Now I have an eight year old daughter who I cannot support as I would like, or as I would have been able to. She goes to one of those schools "where kids don't learn how to read," assuming you meant public schools, and does OK but of course I hope for better. You cannot undo the past, you cannot get your youth back.
I resent the juxtaposition of justice vs 300 children being forced to go to a school where they cannot learn to read. I assure you that far more than that are attending such schools as the sons and daughters of clergy sexual abuse victims.
Guys like you always seem to say that you how much you hate child molesters but you always chafe at any kind of monetary resolution. As far as plaintiff's attorney fees go, the attorneys for the diocese are not working pro bono last the time I looked, and the diocese has multiple law firms in it's employ. Plaintiff's attorneys have gone years without a paycheck in some cases and had they not represented us the diocese would have paid us no mind at all, which is one reason the claims are so old.
I did not wait years to come forward and the diocese still managed to insure that injustice prevailed. Quit blaming the victims and their lawyers.
Posted by: Mike | August 12, 2007 at 03:18 PM
RE: Actually, you don't support the harshest possible punishment. Your attitude aligns quite nicely with Church tactics, which has been to delay justice for as long as possible, and then to ask at the last possible moment, with crocodile tears dripping from their faces, "All of this happened so long ago. Can't we just move on?"
You raise several good points in your reply, notably that paying enormous sums to avoid disclosure is crap. Air out the dirty laundry, get it all dealt with in the light of day, and then we can move on in good conscience. Still, to accept it is... to become tainted by the complicity that you are eschewing in the first place.
My disagreement with your reply comes in where you somehow think that I do not want the guilty punished. I'm a sailor, we tend to go old-testament in punishments, hence the suggested power tools. Yes, it'd never happen under "no cruel and unusual..." and therefore wouldn't happen since I, like many people allow the legal system to take care of punishments.
Posted by: Tugboat | August 12, 2007 at 06:12 PM
Tugboat -- RE: You raise several good points in your reply, notably that paying enormous sums to avoid disclosure is crap. Air out the dirty laundry, get it all dealt with in the light of day, and then we can move on in good conscience.
Thanks for acknowledging my points.
RE: Still, to accept it is... to become tainted by the complicity that you are eschewing in the first place.
I disagree with this. I do not understand why some people don’t want civil law to exist or try to somehow twist it into something unethical. A settlement with a confidentiality agreement or an agreement not to pursue further attempts at prosecution here represents the last ditch attempt of the Church to defend itself, and is also a last kick at the victims of abuse since the criminals and their defenders go free.
On the other hand, I think that people who continue to pay money for their children to be educated in parochial schools, with the full knowledge that some of their money may go to pay for the acts of pedophile priests, are far more complicit in the crimes of the Church than the victims of pedophile abuse could ever be. If more people starved the Church of income across the board, the church hierarchy might be moved to be more responsive to those seeking justice.
RE: My disagreement with your reply comes in where you somehow think that I do not want the guilty punished. I'm a sailor, we tend to go old-testament in punishments, hence the suggested power tools.
I apologize for being too harsh here. What I was trying to emphasize was that people who focus on the settlements are looking at the endgame of a process in which the Church has deliberately run out the clock on any possible criminal or civil penalties by hiding evidence, waiting out defendants, allowing priests to die before they can be brought to trial, holding out until the statute of limitations has passed, and then --- through their hired-gun public relations firms --- suggesting that greedy and unworthy victims held an innocent Church up for ransom. In a significant number of cases, settlements were offered just before a case with considerable evidence behind it was about to go to trial after the Church had been unsuccessful at keeping it out of court. Some of those who criticize victims for accepting settlements play into the Church’s strategy. The hierarchy figures that they still win if they can get people to think that the Church might be in any way an injured party, and that the settlements might be a payout to avoid a smear, especially if the Church doesn’t have to disclose any of the most damaging evidence against it.
In short, settlements are typically made precisely because the Church has successfully avoided all possibility of prosecution, so there is not much point here for people to talk about how they favor seeing the guilty punished.
By the way, the Old Testament regularly provides for monetary fines and penalties for illegal and immoral acts. It rarely prescribes simple and quick physical punishment. Even the Old Testament recognizes civil procedure, even with the supposed taint of complicity when imperfect justice must be rendered.
Posted by: Alec | August 13, 2007 at 02:15 PM
I am confused about the status of the separate Catholic parishes. Are they all part of the RCC because they receive money from the RCC and/or because their land is owned by the RCC? Also, can a church be completely financially independent from the RCC and still be labeled "Catholic"? If a church is not under the umbrella of the RCC does it somehow not have a spiritual sanction? If the independent parishes do receive financial support from the RCC, then they should not be surprised when their finances are in turn affected by lawsuits filed against the corporate entity as a whole. Moreover, if a particular parish could call itself "Catholic" without being a legal part of the RCC, why not just go financially independent and not run the risk of inheriting the tainted past of the RCC? If Catholics are beholden to the hierarchical nature of the church then they must accept the consequences.
Posted by: Jessica | August 17, 2007 at 10:59 AM
By the way...the Judge is Catholic
Posted by: Sandy G | August 25, 2007 at 09:30 PM