Catholic Church Continues to Battle Efforts to Ease Sex Abuse Suits

The hypocrisy and disingenuousness of the Roman Catholic Church leadership remains stunning.  While feigning contrition for the organized crime like world wide policy of enabling and then covering up for predator priests who preyed on children and youths, the Church continues to fight tooth and claw to avoid being held accountable for such heinous abuse - abuse that sometimes pushed victims to drugs, alcohol and suicide.  The spectacle of the criminal trial still ongoing in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the implication of at least two cardinals in the deliberate protection of predators with absolutely no concern for victims should make any thinking Catholic want to head for the church door.   Sadly, as the New York Times reports the Catholic Church leadership is doing everything possible to kill efforts to extend the statute of limitations which would allow more victims recourse for their abuse.  Here are article excerpts:

While the first criminal trial of a Roman Catholic church official accused of covering up child sexual abuse has drawn national attention to Philadelphia, the church has been quietly engaged in equally consequential battles over abuse, not in courtrooms but in state legislatures around the country. 

The fights concern proposals to loosen statutes of limitations, which impose deadlines on when victims can bring civil suits or prosecutors can press charges. These time limits, set state by state, have held down the number of criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits against all kinds of people accused of child abuse .  .  .  

Victims and their advocates in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York are pushing legislators to lengthen the limits or abolish them altogether, and to open temporary “windows” during which victims can file lawsuits no matter how long after the alleged abuse occurred. 

The Catholic Church has successfully beaten back such proposals in many states, arguing that it is difficult to get reliable evidence when decades have passed and that the changes seem more aimed at bankrupting the church than easing the pain of victims. Already reeling from about $2.5 billion spent on legal fees, settlements and prevention programs relating to child sexual abuse, the church has fought especially hard against the window laws .  .  .  .  

Changing the statute of limitations “has turned out to be the primary front for child sex abuse victims,” said Marci A. Hamilton, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University who represents plaintiffs in sexual abuse suits. 

“Even when you have an institution admitting they knew about the abuse, the perpetrator admitting that he did it, and corroborating evidence, if the statute of limitations has expired, there won’t be any justice,” she said. 

Timing is a major factor in abuse cases because many victims are unable to talk about abuse or face their accusers until they reach their 30s, 40s or later, putting the crime beyond the reach of the law. In states where the statutes are most restrictive, like New York, the cutoff for bringing a criminal case is age 23 for most serious sexual crimes other than rape that occurred when the victim was a minor.  

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.

Joan Fitz-Gerald, former president of the Colorado Senate, who proposed the window legislation, was an active Catholic who said she was stunned to find in church one Sunday in 2006 that the archdiocese had asked priests to raise the issue during a Mass and distribute lobbying postcards. “It was the most brutal thing I’ve ever been through,” she said of the church campaign. “The politics, the deception, the lack of concern for not only the children in the past, but for children today.” She has since left the church.

The new archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput, who led the successful campaign to defeat such a bill in Colorado, says that current restrictions exist for “sound legal reasons.” 

There truly is no real contrition on the part of the Church leadership.  The only real concern is over the monetary cost of having been caught and exposed.  The victims don't even show up on the radar screen in Rome.  It's disgusting and a major reason I'm no longer a Catholic.