Panel Backs Abuse Case Bill

A bill that would lengthen the statute of limitations so adult victims could sue the Roman Catholic Church or other organizations for damages in long-ago child-abuse cases sailed out of a Senate committee on a unanimous vote Tuesday.

Senate President Pro Tem John L. Burton (D-San Francisco) said his newly unveiled bill was a direct response to the widening national scandal over sex-abuse by Catholic priests and what Burton called the church’s practice of reassigning offending priests to tasks in which they would have contact with children.

Supported by advocates for child abuse victims, the bill (SB 1779) cleared the Judiciary Committee on a 5-0 vote and now moves to the full Senate, where easy approval is expected. No witnesses or committee members spoke against it.

Gov. Gray Davis, a Catholic, was reviewing the plan but had no position on it, his office said.

A spokesman for the California Catholic Conference, which represents all dioceses and archdioceses in the state, also said it had no position on the bill, whose original contents were removed a few days ago and replaced by the Burton plan.

The spokesman said conference officials were studying the measure. “The thing was just drafted, and it is moving fast,” he said.

Currently, the statute of limitations for filing such a suit is 26 years of age. The bill would suspend that age limit for a one-year period, during which the lawsuits could be filed by an adult of any age who had been sexually abused as a child.

Under Burton’s plan, however, the target of the lawsuits could not be an alleged abuser but only an employer or other responsible third party who knew or should have known of the abuse and failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it. Burton said such steps could include alerting police or taking actions that would isolate the employee from children.

Burton said the bill was aimed at “deep-pockets” defendants such as the Catholic Church.

He said he based his plan in part on the complaint that sexual predators were known to church superiors but reassigned to unsuspecting other parishes and to ministries that involved contact with children.

At a minimum, these priests should be assigned to a “seniors home as opposed to a Catholic Youth Organization Camp,” where they could prey on children again, Burton said.

David Clohessy, director of the 4,000-member Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said he was not surprised that the bill drew no opposition witnesses. “Over the last few years, there has been a sea change in the public’s understanding of the psychological damages of child abuse,” he said.

He told the committee of “heartbreaking” discoveries that adult victims make about their situations long after the trauma of sexual abuse occurred.

Clohessy said experienced pedophiles are extraordinarily skillful at persuading young victims that “it is your fault.” Increasingly, he said, adults in their 30s, 40s and 50s come to an understanding of “what happened to me. Now I finally understand it was not my fault.”