Bishops to Warn of More Lawsuits

Roman Catholic priests across California plan to warn parishioners Sunday that the church faces a wave of sexual-abuse lawsuits and potential financial woes because of a new state law.

At the same time, Los Angeles Archdiocese officials on Monday said they plan to challenge the law, which suspends the statute of limitations in many molestation cases for one year beginning Jan. 1.

The law allows suits against institutions--not just the Catholic Church--that continued to employ a known molester who went on to abuse another victim. So long as they are filed in 2003, the suits may be based on incidents for which the ordinary statute of limitations has long since run out.

Under current state law, victims of childhood sexual abuse may sue only up to their 26th birthday or within three years of discovering that their emotional problems are linked to a molestation.

Church officials and plaintiffs’ attorneys estimate the new law will unleash hundreds of lawsuits statewide.

“We did this to prepare people for this legislation,” said Bishop Tod D. Brown of the Diocese of Orange. “It will potentially have very serious consequences. Most people don’t even know about it.”

Brown said the financial burden on the church will come not only from any settlements and judgments, but from attorney fees incurred handling the expected avalanche of cases. He said bishops worry they won’t have the money to continue key educational and social services.

To prepare parishioners, clerics around California will read from a letter written by the Catholic bishops who head the state’s 12 dioceses. The statement highlights the risks of removing the statute of limitations on molestation cases.

“Some of the lawsuits may involve the revival of already settled cases and some may involve alleged perpetrators and witnesses long since dead,” the bishops wrote. “Under those circumstances, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain the truth.”

The letter also contends that the Catholic Church has been falsely portrayed as a large corporation with deep pockets and goes on to list church reforms made over the last year to protect children from abuse.

But victims rights advocates and plaintiff attorneys call the warning to parishioners a calculated move to gain public support for the church at the expense of those abused by priests.

Raymond P. Boucher, a Los Angeles attorney who said he has 100 clients in Los Angeles and Orange counties who plan to sue under the new law, contends the bishops’ letter “ultimately is going to backfire.”

“What [the church] is trying to do is a shameless public-relations spin designed to bring sympathy to the church,” Boucher said.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced plans Monday to fight the new law in court. The move -- which officials said is supported by other California dioceses -- is a change for the church, which took a neutral stance as legislators approved the law earlier this year.

“We’ve evaluated this legislation ... and we intend to challenge it” on constitutional grounds, said archdiocese spokesman Tod Tamberg. “We believe that the legislation is massively unfair, and it’s targeted specifically at the Catholic Church.”

Tamberg said that though the church remains committed to helping victims of sexual abuse, the law improperly forces the church to defend itself against allegations that go back decades.

“Even in the best situations, these are activities that are difficult to evaluate,” he said. “It’s difficult if not impossible to find the truth [in many old cases].... It’s not good legislation.”

If upheld in the courts, the law will have major effects not only on the church, but on victims of decades-old sexual abuse. Victims rights advocates say the new law will help -- among others -- victims who went to the church for help and were strung along in counseling paid for by the church until the statute of limitations ran out.

“This has been part of their strategy,” said John Manly, a Costa Mesa attorney who said he has 15 cases ready to file in January. “They use the people’s faith and get them on the counseling track.”

Larry Drivon, a Stockton plaintiff’s attorney who helped craft the legislation, said a consortium of attorneys across California already has 175 to 200 lawsuits it intends to file early next year, including Boucher’s. Katherine K. Freeberg, an attorney in Irvine specializing in sexual-abuse cases who does not belong to the consortium, said she has 76 cases she plans to pursue under the new law.

Donald Hoard, a Petaluma resident whose son was one of eight victims awarded $830,000 by the church in 1995 for sexual abuse by a priest, said the new law is important, even if it causes a financial crisis within the church, because it will force reform on the leadership.

“They do nothing until they were faced with civil lawsuits,” Hoard said. “This will force them to do what they should have been doing.”