Under New State Laws, Catholic Church Could See Tidal Wave of Abuse Suits

Following up on this morning's post about the removal of the bishop of Buffalo, New York, the Insurance Journal is reporting that the Roman Catholic Church is likely facing a tidal wave of new lawsuits as 15 states have amended their laws to extend the time within which victims of abuse can file lawsuits.  Financially, the bill for the Church as a whole within the USA alone could exceed 44 billion. As I noted to some commentators on the cross posting of the blog post on Facebook, I am not necessarily advocating for believers to give up their faith, I merely believe (i) the Catholic Church hierarchy needs to be held accountable for its misdeeds and cover ups of crimes against children and youths, and (ii) that a thorough house cleaning of the hierarchy is needed.  For good measure, the Church needs to throw away its 12th century dogma and update its positions on modern science based knowledge.  Sadly, given the Church's history of making money (and control over its members) its true god, punishing monetary judgments are likely the best way to force these needed reforms.   Here are excerpts from the Insurance Journal piece:

A wave of new laws in 15 states that allow people to make claims of sexual abuse going back decades could bring a deluge of lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church that could surpass anything seen so far in its clergy abuse crisis.

Associated Press reporting found it could result in thousands of new cases against the church and more than $4 billion in payouts.

It’s a financial reckoning playing out in such populous Catholic strongholds as New York, California and New Jersey, among the eight states that go the furthest with “lookback windows” that allow sex abuse claims no matter how old.

That has lawyers fighting for clients with TV ads and billboards asking, “Were you abused by the church?” And Catholic dioceses are considering bankruptcy, victim compensation funds and even tapping valuable real estate to stay afloat.

“It’s like a whole new beginning for me,” said 71-year-old Nancy Holling-Lonnecker of San Diego, who plans to take advantage of an upcoming three-year window for such suits in California. Her claim dates back to the 1950s, when she says a priest repeatedly raped her in a confession booth beginning when she was 7 years old.

AP interviews with more than a dozen lawyers and clergy abuse watchdog groups offered a wide range of estimates but many said they expected at least 5,000 new cases against the church in New York, New Jersey and California alone, resulting in potential payouts that could surpass the $4 billion paid out since the clergy sex abuse first came to light in the 1980s.

Some lawyers believe payouts could be heavily influenced by the recent reawakening over sexual abuse fueled by the (hash)MeToo movement, the public shaming of accused celebrities and the explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report last year that found 300 priests abused more than 1,000 children in that state over seven decades.

“The general public is more disgusted than ever with the clergy sex abuse and the cover-up, and that will be reflected in jury verdicts,” said Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston attorney who was at the center of numerous lawsuits against the church in that city and was portrayed in the movie “Spotlight.”

This summer, when New York state opened its one-year window allowing sexual abuse suits with no statute of limitations, more than 400 cases against the church and other institutions were filed on the first day alone. That number is now up to more than 1,000, with most against the church.

New Jersey’s two-year window opens this week and California’s three-year window begins in the new year, with a new provision that allows plaintiffs to collect triple damages if a demonstrable cover-up can be shown. Arizona, Montana and Vermont opened ones earlier this year.

The church’s response weighs heavily on compensation funds and bankruptcy.

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan set up the first fund in 2016, pitching it as a way to compensate victims without walloping the church and forcing it to cut programs. It has since paid more than $67 million to 338 alleged victims, an average $200,000 each.

The idea has caught on in other states. All five dioceses in New Jersey and three in Colorado opened one, as did seven dioceses in Pennsylvania and six in California, including the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest in the U.S.

More drastic and increasingly more common is the bankruptcy option. Less than a month after New York’s one-year lookback window took effect, the upstate Diocese of Rochester filed for bankruptcy, the 20th diocese or religious order in the country to do so.

When a diocese files for bankruptcy, lawsuits by alleged abuse survivors are suspended and payments to them and others owed money are frozen while a federal judge decides how much to pay everyone and still leave enough for the diocese to continue to operate. It’s orderly and victims avoid costly and lengthy court cases, but they often get less than they would if they were successful in a trial.

Bankruptcy can also leave abuse survivors with a sense of justice denied because the church never has to face discovery by plaintiff lawyers and forced to hand over documents, possibly implicating higher-ups who hid the abuse. . . .  “It’s a different process in bankruptcy _ you don’t get discovery and you don’t get it in compensation programs. The truth never comes to light.”

Unfortunately, Pope Francis has been nowhere near aggressive enough in cleaning house and this failing, combined with insincere crocodile tears by bishops and cardinals has only increased victims' feeling of having been victimized twice.  One can only wonder if the Church's leadership will ever "get it" that they are the biggest obstacle. 

Trump's Lies About Arpaio Being "Convicted for Doing His Job"

Any sentient, non-racist person should know by now that, if Der Trumpenführer's lips are moving, it's a near guarantee that he is lying.  His remarks about convicted former sheriff Joe Arpaio when he spoke to a rally of his racist, white trash supporters, however, brought the lies to levels shocking even for the narcissistic, pathologically lying Trump.  Trump's claim that Arpaio had been convicted for "doing his job" was not only untrue, but also white washed a track record of abuse and of Arpaio's failing to do his job.  By pardoning Arpaio, Trump clearly confirmed that he himself is a white supremacist who is perfectly fine with the mistreatment of minorities - something that even extends to members of the LGBT community.   Stories in The Atlantic and the Seattle Times look at Arpaio's record of abuse and malfeasance in office - things that Trump has now lauded.  First, these highlights from The Atlantic:

The pardon that Donald Trump granted Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, sends this message to American law enforcement: if you violate the civil rights of Latinos while enforcing immigration law, the president of the United States approves—and even if you’re one of the vanishingly few sheriffs or police chiefs that the Department of Justice charges with a crime, he’ll intervene to spare you.

The pardon is thus a slap in the face to Latinos, and ought to be an affront to all fair-minded Americans who value the Constitution, the rule of law, and the legitimacy of the system.

 In America as a whole, Sheriff Arpaio is a figure in the culture wars best known for putting prison inmates in pink underwear and insisting Obama was a secret foreigner. In Arizona, where voters only recently turned him out of office after tiring of his actions, his record is better known. I summarized its low points in 2012:

• "Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Phoenix-based department repeatedly arrested Latinos illegally, abused them in the county jails and failed to investigate hundreds of sexual assaults, the Justice Department charged after a three-year civil rights investigation," the Los Angeles Times reported. The investigation found "432 cases of sexual assault and child molestation, often involving Latinos, that were not properly investigated over a three-year period." Additionally, "one Latino was intentionally hit by a patrol car and dragged, with instructions for other deputies to 'leave him there ... A Latino motorist was incarcerated for 13 days for not using his turn signal. Emails written by deputies caricatured Mexicans as being from 'Mexifornia,' and deputies derided Latino inmates as 'wetbacks,' 'Mexican bitches,' 'stupid Mexicans' and other epithets."(The Los Angeles Times)

• "Maricopa County Sheriff's officials misspent $99.5 million in restricted jail funds over the last eight years ... discrepancies existed for years between sheriff's employees' actual duties and the duties reported in county payroll records." (The Arizona Republic)

• "A federal judge has sided with inmates' claims that conditions in Maricopa County jails continue to violate their constitutional rights." (The Arizona Republic)

• "The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office failed to adequately investigate more than 400 sex-crime cases, including dozens in El Mirage, over a two-year period because of poor oversight and former Chief Deputy David Hendershott's desire to protect a key investigator from bad publicity, according to documents pertaining to a recent internal investigation released by the Sheriff's Office." (The Arizona Republic)

• "A federal investigation found that deputies had used stun guns on prisoners already strapped into a 'restraint chair.' The family of one man who died after being forced into the restraint chair was awarded more than six million dollars as the result of a suit... The family of another man killed in the restraint chair got $8.25 million in a pre-trial settlement. (This deal was reached after the discovery of a surveillance video that showed fourteen guards beating, shocking, and suffocating the prisoner, and after the sheriff's office was accused of discarding evidence, including the crushed larynx of the deceased.) To date, lawsuits brought against Arpaio's office have cost Maricopa County taxpayers forty-three million dollars, according to some estimates. But the Sheriff has never acknowledged any wrongdoing in his jails, never apologized to victims or their families. In fact, many of the officers involved have been promoted." (The New Yorker)

• "The Phoenix New Times ran an investigation of Arpaio's real-estate dealings that included Arpaio's home address, which he argued was possibly a violation of state law. When the paper revealed that it had received an impossibly broad subpoena, demanding, among other things, the Internet records of all visitors to its Web site in the previous two and a half years, sheriff's deputies staged late-night raids on the homes of Michael Lacey and James Larkin, executives of Village Voice Media, which owns the New Times. The deputies arrested both men for, they said, violating grand-jury secrecy. The county attorney declined to prosecute, and it turned out that the subpoenas were issued unlawfully." (The New Yorker)

• On numerous occasions Arpaio put political opponents in his cross-hairs, eventually prompting an FBI investigation that began in the last days of the Bush Administration.

That was a highly abridged account of Sheriff Arpaio’s misdeeds. But it gives a sense of the man that Trump pardoned––a man every bit as cruel, immoral, and flagrant in his disregard for the rule of law and basic standards of propriety as Trump himself.

The Seattle Times piece looks further at the costs incurred by Maricopa County as a result of Arpaio's civil rights and physical abuses: 

 Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has made a name for himself on the national political stage with his crackdowns on illegal immigration and tough jail policies.

But his efforts have also have cost Maricopa County tens of millions of dollars in court cases. Several people who were the target of Arpaio’s investigations have sued the county and walked away with large checks.

On Monday, records released by county officials show a four-year political feud with county officials in which Arpaio was a central player has cost taxpayers $38 million.The following is look at some of Arpaio’s legal costs over his 21-year tenure as sheriff. 

OFFICIAL CHARGED — $3.5 MILLIONMaricopa County taxpayers paid former Supervisor Don Stapley $3.5 million to settle his abuse-of-power lawsuit against Arpaio. Stapley’s lawsuit arose out of two failed criminal cases brought against him by the sheriff and an Arpaio ally who was then the county’s top prosecutor. Both criminal cases collapsed in court, without either case ever going to trial. Stapley contended that he had been wrongfully targeted, while Arpaio and his ally maintained they were trying to root out corruption in county government.

POLICE DOG’S DEATH — $775,000The county agreed to pay $775,000 to settle a lawsuit that alleged Arpaio violated Chandler police Sgt. Tom Lovejoy’s rights by arresting him on an animal-abuse charge after the officer’s police dog died from excessive heat in August 2007 after being left in a hot police vehicle for 12 hours. Lovejoy was acquitted of the misdemeanor charge and accused Arpaio of trumping up the criminal case so the sheriff could exploit the publicity. The sheriff argued the arrest was constitutional because investigators had probable cause to arrest Lovejoy.

RACIAL PROFILING — $21 MILLIONArpaio’s office estimates that it will cost taxpayers more than $21 million over the next 18 months to pay for changes required by a judge who found the agency had systematically racially profiled Latinos in patrols. The compliance costs including hiring a court-appointed official to monitor the agency’s operations, installing video cameras in hundreds of the agency’s patrol vehicles and carrying out additional training to ensure officers aren’t making unconstitutional arrests. Arpaio has said he doesn’t regret getting involved in immigration enforcement and is appealing the judge’s racial-profiling ruling. He has asked the federal government to pick up the compliance tab.

JAIL DEATH — $3.2 MILLIONThe county paid $3.2 million to settle a lawsuit by a diabetic woman’s family members who alleged she was denied medical treatment while incarcerated in one Arpaio’s jails. Deborah Ann Braillard was brought to the jail in January 2005 and died more than two weeks later at a hospital. The lawsuit alleged that detention officers and health workers within the jail system knew of her condition but did nothing to treat her. Braillard received no insulin or a diabetic diet after she was brought in the jail system and was found face-down her cell after her daughter called the jail. She died 18 days after she was taken to hospital, the lawsuit said. Lawyers for the county said Braillard failed to advise the jail of her condition and denied that she complained about her condition.

RESTRAINT CHAIR DEATH — $8.25 MILLIONThe county and its excess insurance carrier shared the costs of an $8.25 million settlement in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed the family of a man who died in 1996 during a struggle with detention officers who forced him into a restraint chair and pushed his head into his chest. A medical examiner ruled that Scott Norberg died accidentally by “positional asphyxia.” The lawsuit alleged that Arpaio’s officers suffocated Norberg and the medical examiner’s office covered up evidence of a beating. Federal investigators dropped their investigation of Norberg’s death, saying the evidence is consistent with the opinion of medical examiner. Arpaio said he was confident his officers didn’t do anything wrong and that he believes the Justice Department’s decision exonerated his officers.

One reporter I heard on satellite radio said that Arpaio had costs the county in over $100 million in judgments.  And that doesn't include misuse of nearly $100 million in funds.

Trump's pardon of Arpaio speaks volumes about Trump, none of it good.