Um, perhaps I’m misremembering, but if a church comes out to officially involve themselves in politics like this, aren’t they supposed to forfeit their tax free status?

No, that’s only in regards to endorsing candidates, not legislation.

How can Catholics have a thing to do with the church after this?  I am just utterly baffled that we don’t see mass defections.  The Pope has just shown himself to be immoral - doesn’t that overturn the entire damn house of cards?

The proposed change to the law would put “all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk,”

It’s rare that you see such a simple declaration of guilt.  This law would have no effect on the Catholic church <i>if priests weren’t abusing children<i>.

What’s the Latin word for “chutzpah”?

The Pope has just shown himself to be immoral - doesn’t that overturn the entire damn house of cards?

Throughout the history of the church, there have been many obviously immoral Popes and many obviously immoral Catholic campaigns/scandals. Religious people are often remarkably forgiving when it comes to those they presume to be their moral superiors. I’ve watched a couple of documentaries on this topic, and it seems that even many of the children who were abused by their priests still consider themselves Catholic, regardless of the fact that they feel completely ignored and invalidated by the Catholic hierarchy.

OK.  what immediately comes to mind is “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”  The church has now officially abandoned all moral authority and it raises the question, “Is Ratzinger the Antichrist?”

Just as a reminder of how the Catholic Church could have handled all this differently (not criminally, for instance)I’m republishing this comment about how the Episcopalians faced and dealt with the same, but in an ethical manner:

“Andrew Sullivan has put a few good posts that show you what a church (in this case, the Episcopalians) which actually gives a shit about protecting its flock and securing justice for rape victims will do, when confronted with evidence that members of its clergy are sexually assaulting its members.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/an-episcopal-story.html
The Roman Church is very quick to protest that clergy sex abuse is not limited to their domain, and this is true, but when one compares the way that it has handled the issue to the way it is handled by other denominations, their protestations ring mighty hollow.

A singular case in point happened a number of years ago in a small town in Massachusetts. The rector of the Episcopal Church was accused of having had a sexual relationship with a 14 year old boy more than thirty years prior when the priest was serving at another parish in another state. The relationship appears to have been at least quasi-consensual (although one could argue, convincingly in my view, that a fully consensual relationship between a grown man, particularly one as influential as a priest, and an adolescent is not possible).

The priest, when confronted with the accusation, admitted that the relationship had taken place, and the Diocese of Massachusetts removed him, not only from his position as parish rector, but also from the Episcopal priesthood, THAT VERY DAY.

Even though the relationship had taken place a long time before, and even though the priest was almost universally beloved in his community and very effective at his calling, the church, understanding that in cases like these the issue is not sex but abuse of power, determined quite rightly that there should be no statute of limitations and that zero tolerance must be demonstrated.

I always think of this when I read about clergy sex abuse cases going on for five, ten, a dozen years. With regard to the people who exist within its hierarchy, the Roman church’s power is absolute. It could remove these men with the same dispatch that the Episcopal church showed if it wanted to. It doesn’t want to.”

Here is an even more relevant story from the Episcopal Church. A brief summary:

While Charles Bennison was a young rector of a parish in California in the 1970s, his brother John, a seminarian who was working as the youth minister in the same parish, was having sex with several parishioners, including a 14-year-old girl. Eventually, John left the parish and the priesthood (yes, he was ordained anyway!). Although Charles knew of this scandal, however, he said nothing to the police about the 14-year-old.

In 1998, Charles becomes bishop of Pennsylvania, but the story gets out about his brother and his shenanigans. Charles’s failure to contact the police at the time causes a furor in 2006. The result: Charles Bennison is officially brought up on charges by the church hierarchy and deposed. Bennison is appealing the sentence, but this is a prime example of a church taking responsibility by firing one its bishops.”

Yet another example in contrast:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/an-episcopal-story-ctd.html

A bill in Connecticut’s legislature that would remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases has sparked a fervent response from the state’s Roman Catholic bishops, who released a letter to parishioners Saturday imploring them to oppose the measure.

I’m usually opposed to hyperbolic language in wire copy, but I’d say that “fervent” and “imploring” pretty well sums up the mood of an organisation that’s about to be bankrupted as punishment for decades of covering up child molestation. It’s so blatant and desperate, you almost have to admire the level of honesty.

Speaking of which, for those of you who missed it yesterday:

Bishop Giacomo Babini blames Jews for attacks on Pope

A retired Italian bishop has provoked fury by reportedly suggesting that “Zionists” are behind the current storm of accusations over clerical sex abuse shaking the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Monsignor Giacomo Babini, the Bishop Emeritus of Grossetto, was quoted by the Italian Roman Catholic website Pontifex as saying he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism of the Pope, given that it was “powerful and refined” in nature.

I’ll give this to Babini, he’s a truly old-school conservative Catholic anti-Semite. Not for him the PR shill’s attempt to exploit the historical persecution of Jews by drawing parallels to the supposed victimisation of Pope Ratzi. And not for a moment did he consider taking the sleazy innuendo route of Bill Donohue, who claimed that Papa Prada is the victim of the New York Times and other outlets engaging in a media conspiracy that ignored molestation by rabbis (”...nudge-nudge, wink-wink, know who owns all that media?”).

No, Babini goes right for the vintage stuff: pre-Vatican II “Christ-killer” rhetoric of the kind that made that PR shill’s comparison look ridiculous in the first place. Makes one wonder about the real opinion of other leaders of this gerontocratic institution toward da Jooooos.

Just as a reminder of how the Catholic Church could have handled all this differently (not criminally, for instance)I’m republishing this comment about how the Episcopalians faced and dealt with the same, but in an ethical manner

I’ve also now read in several places that the Jesuits are bloody livid over the way Ratzi and the hierarchy have handled this (the Society of Jesus, the RCC’s intellectual order, are deliberately excluded from the Vatican hierarchy). Apparently a lot of Franciscans are extremely unhappy as well.

To use an simile, this is like overhearing the defence attorney or children of a mob boss grumbling semi-publicly about his behaviour.

So they can’t lose their 501c3 status for getting involved in politics, except endorsing candidates. But can their non-profit status be revoked if they declare that their leader is a head of state? Because saying that the Pope cannot be forced to testify in the U.S. because he is the leader of a country, should make everything about his “country” taxable. And with taxes the U.S. and the other countries where this plague has been allowed to spread can recoup a tiny bit of the money we’ve spent trying to right this egregious wrong.

I have heard the apologists and I’ve noticed how many of them are over the age of 65. But what is absolutely, totally mind boggling to me is the parents who still take their kids to Catholic churches and schools. Has anyone asked the teenaged children what they think of all of this? Because I was the type of nerdy kid who read the newspaper and I would have been pissed if my parents took me to a place where they knew other kids were routinely raped and abused.

The “legislation would undermine the mission of the Catholic Church”

The truth is, it will undermine their mission.  Their mission is to uphold and create a strict hierarchy of roles and a mass of unquestioningly obedient followers.  Once you realize what their mission actually is, their actions make much more sense within that framework.  I just wish that more people would realize what the church’s warped priorities really are.

They’re probably going to frame this (if they haven’t already) as a vehicle for opportunistic “trial lawyers” to bring lawsuits years after the fact.

Demonizing lawyers works for the health insurance lobby. Why shouldn’t it work for the CC, especially since they’re such experts at demons?

Laws against molesting children undermine the mission of the church.  And they’re willing to admit that, in public.  The RCC is becoming nearly impossible to parody.

quote
I have heard the apologists and I’ve noticed how many of them are over the age of 65. But what is absolutely, totally mind boggling to me is the parents who still take their kids to Catholic churches and schools. Has anyone asked the teenaged children what they think of all of this? Because I was the type of nerdy kid who read the newspaper and I would have been pissed if my parents took me to a place where they knew other kids were routinely raped and abused. /quote

In my experience in catholic school, there is a large amount of sailing down the river of denial.  It was not uncommon to hear parents claim that ‘bad stuff won’t happen here- we have nuns!’  I also know a number of catholic women who have somehow convinced themselves that the catholic church really doesn’t consider them 2nd class citizens.  Frankly, I consider any woman who belongs to the catholic church to be in denial- why else would you choose to be part of an institution that believes you are worth less and inherently more sinful than men?

Are there statues of limitation on covering up crimes?  Can we start hauling some of these bigwigs into court?

Catholic Church Declares Moral Bankruptcy

I mean, how else can you read a letter that says “oppose this law because it will make us civilly responsible for criminal acts that we might otherwise have been able to shrug off”? It’s Like Willie Sutton arguing that bank robberies should be made a misdemeanor offense.

Btw, I’ve noticed a few articles on RCC molestation in Africa. Given that Stranger piece on the use of Alaska as a dumping ground for US molesters, one cringes.

“What is it going to take for the Catholic Church to hold itself accountable for the evil of enabling the rape and torture of children in its parishes, schools, and medical facilities?”

The pope getting caught in the act. That is THE ONLY way you’re ever going to get them to acknowledge ANY wrongdoing.

Don’t you get it? They’re priests. God’s bros down here on earth to tell you how it’s supposed to be. DO NOT question them!

I see no logic to the idea that the passage of time means a crime is no longer a crime.

As I understand it, the idea behind statutes of limitations is that citizens should not have to live in fear that something they did years or decades ago will be dredged up to bash them. Plus, as MS pointed out above, there are problems with memories fading.

But it’s questionable whether molesting children applies. To me, that’s one of the worst things you can do short of murder. And in any case, it’s in extremely poor taste (to say the least) for the CC to be agitating against the statute of limitations in these circumstances.

firefall: I see no logic to the idea that the passage of time means a crime is no longer a crime. I dunno if it’s a concept that is unique to the USA

No, it’s not. The statute of limitations exists in both criminal and civil law in countries which cloned their common law system from England (I don’t know about countries which derive their legal system from elsewhere, but certainly it exists in the US and in Commonwealth countries) because with the passage of time, witness memory fades, evidence is lost or spoiled, etc. There’s a definition and list of civil disputes here to which statutes of limitations apply.

There is no longer any statute of limitations for any serious criminal offenses in any part of the UK. What used to mean that survivors of child abuse could not bring charges against the molestor, was a statute requiring the crime to be reported within a given amount of time.

In fact, looking at the details, this is exactly the issue in Connecticut - at the moment, a person molested as a child has until the age of 48 to report the crime: the change in statute would allow people who were molested more than 30 years ago to now report the crime.

What’s the Latin word for “chutzpah”?

Not a word, but a phrase: Peruro perussi perustum, which combines the idea of a fiery temper with the concept of something that really burns your ass.

By the by, what are these? I see no logic to the idea that the passage of time means a crime is no longer a crime. I dunno if it’s a concept that is unique to the USA, but I’d never encountered it outside fiction, til I moved here.

Imagine when you were 18, you celebrated high school graduation by getting totally tanked, tried to steal the neighbour’s car for a joyride and instead got it stuck in a ditch across the road from the end of the driveway.  Fortunately for you, the neighbour didn’t find out who did it.

Twenty years later, having sworn off booze because of how scared you were of that incident, you’ve graduated college, married and had a family, have a respectable job, do all sort of volunteer work for the community…and then the cops show up at your door to charge you with grand theft auto because it rurns out one of your buddies from that night two decades before thought it was hilarious what you did and took a picture of you stumbling out of the ditched car, and the picture just turned up in an old album that someone showed the neighbour.  And he decides he’s still holding a grudge.

I don’t know about countries which derive their legal system from elsewhere, but certainly it exists in the US and in Commonwealth countries.

The vast majority of nations use either English Common-law derived systems, with its statutes of limitations, or Roman Civil-law derived systems (Napoleonic Code for instance) in which the same concept is termed a ‘period of proscription’.

Very, very few nations, however, extend either to crimes as heinous as child molestation.

How can Catholics have a thing to do with the church after this?

Excuses, delusion, willful ignorance, the usual.

People will let you get away with anything and everything when you’ve convinced them you have a monopoly on their eternal salvation.

I think that the biggest reason for statutes of limitation is because eyewitness testimony can often become unreliable in a shorter amount of time than you would expect.  However, modern cases usually have other types of evidence, so bad memories aren’t as much of an issue.  Some states even have laws where the statute of limitations for certain crimes are longer or shorter, depending on the type of evidence presented.

There are some crimes that should never have a statute of limitations, and I think child abuse is serious enough to fit into that category.

None of you who are outraged by this opposition have ever been or known anyone who was falsely accused of a crime or tort.  Another reason for S/L’s is to prevent false accusations which cannot be defended adequately because of the passage of time.  One should have the guts to come forward by the time you’re 48 years old. 

Twenty years later, having sworn off booze because of how scared you were of that incident, you’ve graduated college, married and had a family, have a respectable job, do all sort of volunteer work for the community…and then the cops show up at your door to charge you with grand theft auto because it rurns out one of your buddies from that night two decades before thought it was hilarious what you did and took a picture of you stumbling out of the ditched car, and the picture just turned up in an old album that someone showed the neighbour.  And he decides he’s still holding a grudge.

Change the scenario to one where you weren’t the guy who took the car but somebody claims you were.  And the car owner hates your guts for unrelated reasons, but now that you have a job and some money he wants some of yours.

They say bad facts make bad law.  Even 20 years past 18 (i.e. 38 years old) is plenty of time.  I am emphatically not a believer in the “recovered memory” movement.

Murder has no statute of limitations, which allowed Kennedy relative Michael Skakel to be tried and punished as an adult for a crime he supposedly committed as a child. Fuzzy memories and absence of exculpatory evidence after a quarter-century helped seal his fate.

Statutes of limitation are based on fairness: compensation for a victim’s injuries versys the pain of having to defend oneself decades after the fact. Thirty years seems a good long crime—is infinity really necessary, considering the Church would be held liable long after the bad actors are dead and gone?

I also remember the fake suppressed memories of Satanic and other alleged abuse from the 80s—a lot of people in the day care business had their lives turned upside down for years because of abuse allegations.

The Catholic Church keeps digging holes.  They could have stopped this a long time ago by punishing the priests when the crimes happened.  But they have to keep covering it up and worse, bash those who criticize them.  Stop fucking children, period.

I would have been pissed if my parents took me to a place where they knew other kids were routinely raped and abused.

Earth?

30 years is in fact a long time. Permitting suits after decades have gone by means that the past ends up revictimizing the present; someone gets “therapy” fifty years after it could have done some good, at the cost of bankrupting a church whose membership had nothing to do with the crime.

Child sexual abuse is an awful, awful crime and it’s good that the SOL is long enough that people have plenty of time to come to terms with it and seek justice - but past 30 years it really does just start to seem like a fishing expedition. The points about defense and memory are cogent ones as well. I can’t remember what I did 30 days ago - 30 years???

I’m not sympathetic to the church, but isn’t changing the statute of limitation retroactively an Ex Post Facto law? How did they get this past constitutional issues?

Bruce, no it is not.  It isn’t making an action illegal that was previously legal and prosecuting someone for what they did when what they did was legal when they did it.  It is just changing the procedural rules which is done all the time.

But they have to keep covering it up and worse, bash those who criticize them.  Stop fucking children, period.

Ha!

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/104226/

In all the ways I am disgusted, outraged, angry, and adjectives that have not been invented yet, I am heartbroken what this all means for the church in Camden, NJ, I go to on Christmas day (and I am an atheist). It is led by Rev. Doyle, a member of the Camden 28 (see the documentary on these brave clergy and laity). They quietly put into practice Catholic social justice teachings in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in our most impoverished city. Well-to-do Catholics from Haddonfield, Cherry Hill, etc., in their furs and pearls and designer three-piece suits, file into the church, and tithe their money there, because they left their own parishes disgusted by the conservative takeover of their churches. I fear the fall-out not so much for the church, but for the community it serves. It will be devastating. We can all gloat about the self-destruction of the RCC (and I am), but who is going to pick up the slack of those who serve the poorest of the poor among us, who will also be a casualty?  I hate them for this in some ways most of all.

Wow. A lot of church apologists today.

So how long should someone who was sexually abused have to seek justice/restitution of some kind? What period of time would make you feel better about being a member of an organization that systematically sexually abuses kids?

30 years seems reasonable, Mark.

What period of time would make you feel better about being a member of an organization that systematically sexually abuses kids?

Humanity?

People have to get past the “Church” part of this. The church didn’t invent child rape. It’s just an organization where a bunch of child rapists congregated because there were some structural elements that made it easier to get away with their sick crimes. You think that was all of the child rapists in the world? You think that was most of them? You think that was even a big discernable group of them?

Think again. Annihilate the Catholic Church, turn every bishop to dust, and tomorrow you will have little girls and boys being raped by grownups belonging to OTHER churches or to no church at all.

The problem is the behavior, not the allegedly unique (but in fact, all too ordinary) circumstances and institutions surrounding it.

Alkaloid, I’m pretty sure that whatever you did thirty days ago, it didn’t involve molesting any children. That’s not the kind of thing that you forget, and even if you did, it doesn’t make you any less guilty.

No, Miffyfish, but it might involve where I was, or what my daily schedule was, or who I was interacting with, etc. We don’t have statutes of limitation because we love the criminals so much, we have them because innocent people need to be able to prove their innocence. That’s very difficult to do when the accusation lies so far in the past.

Put it another way - get rid of the SOL for robbery and let me claim you robbed me 50 years ago. Assuming we’re both old enough for that to have happened, it will be very difficult for you to dispute my story, even if you’ve never stolen anything in your life, even if we’ve never actually met.

The arguments for lengthening the SOL would be a lot better, by the way, if it wasn’t already so long. Your side won this dispute already, in other words - the SOL for other crimes are on the order of five years or ten years.

But the statute is 30 years. That’s an incredibly long time. The number of victims who will be able to get justice with a further extension is tiny; the number of people who could face spurious accusations is huge.

I think that the biggest reason for statutes of limitation is because eyewitness testimony can often become unreliable in a shorter amount of time than you would expect.  However, modern cases usually have other types of evidence, so bad memories aren’t as much of an issue.  Some states even have laws where the statute of limitations for certain crimes are longer or shorter, depending on the type of evidence presented.

The sooner we realize that eyewitness testimony is (for the most part) bad evidence, the better our justice system will be. Given what we know about memory (which tends to decline rapidly, and then more or less plateau over the years) I don’t think it makes a huge difference whether one is questioned about a suspect one year after a crime or seven. We also know that many people’s memories can be manipulated simply by the way questions about a memory are worded.

Fortunately, false memories aren’t as much of a problem as they once were because (1) fewer clinicians engage in counseling strategies that encourage the creation of false memories than in the past, and (2) we now know that most people don’t respond to traumatic events by repressing them, so it’s no longer assumed that anyone who’s ever had a nightmare must be suffering from some kind of repressed memory.

Well, here’s how people are rationalizing it.  An email my mom got from her high school classmates from a small town surrounding one of the 2 Benedictine Archabbies in the US.

I received this ...it was written by a Jewish business man…us Catholics could take some PR lessons from him!

Walk with your shoulders high and your head higher. Be a proud member of the most important non-governmental entity in the United States today. Then remember what Jeremiah said: ‘Stand by the roads, and look and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is and walk in it, and find rest for your souls’. Be proud to speak up for your faith with pride and reverence and learn what your Church does for all other religions. Be proud that you’re a Catholic.

MS: one reason for the statute of limitations is that the guy who knocked over a liquor store for funds when he was 25, who has not committed robbery since then, is unlikely to rob a store again when he is 47. Many criminals simply mature out of it.
Pederasty, otoh, doesn’t tend to go away. And liquor stores and gas stations tell the police they’ve been robbed. Children often wait 20 years to admit to being molested. So the man who raped children 30 years ago is probably still sexually abusing them, perhaps simply learning to pick his victims even more carefully. So the accusation from 30 years ago can stop crimes NOW, whereas in the case of other types of crime, usually not.

I’m against shortening the statute of limitations for crimes in general.  But that’s because I give a shit about due process and fair trials.  Just try having a fair trial 20 years after the fact with the full force of the state pressing down on you.

On the other hand, the interest here by the Church is self-interested ass-covering - the lowest form of cowardice on the planet.  And it’s ass-covering to protect a bunch of pedophiles and their enablers to boot.

Pederasty, otoh, doesn’t tend to go away.

Exactly!  There may be a few cases where abusers have a change of heart and stop abusing people.  But more commonly they will change - for the worse.  If a priest abused a 12 year-old 31 years ago, that 43 year-old man may now feel ready to testify.  The priest’s current 12 year-old victims may not be ready to come forward.

Child abuse is a very different type of crime than robbery.  With a robbery, there’s rarely a question of whether it actually happened, but there is the problem of a false identification of who committed it.  With child abuse, it’s very rare that victims forget whether or not it actually happened, and the problem of false identification only comes up in cases where the perpetrator is a stranger, which is very rare.  Also, many of these priests abused more than one child, so if many people remember the same abuser, it’s far less likely to be a false identification.

“Thirty years seems a good long crime—is infinity really necessary, considering the Church would be held liable long after the bad actors are dead and gone?”

An employing or supporting institution is usually only held liable when it can be demonstrated that they facilitated or abetted the bad actor.  The RCC wouldn’t have to worry about being held liable for the damages of child-rape if they hadn’t, you know, facilitated and abetted child-rape for decades upon decades upon decades.  In short, cry me a fucking river.

Isn’t this proposed legislation going to remove the SOL for civil liability, rather than criminal? It might be very hard to prove a criminal case 30 years down the road, but it seems like the RCC could still be civilly liable for covering it up. I may also not really know what I’m talking about, so perhaps some legal-minded folks could clear this up.

Catgirl, it’s not thirty years after the crime was committed, for sexual molestation of a child: it’s thirty years after the victim reaches the age of majority. The clock starts ticking when the survivor of child molestation reaches the age of 18. (Or so I understand from the linked sites, but that’s reasonably standard now for a modern understanding of child abuse.)

Thirty years, from a secular point of view, doesn’t seem unreasonable as a time limit.

The issue is that it’s the Catholic Church arguing that the sins committed by the church hierarchy thirty years ago to protect rapists and child molestors, ought to be legally overlooked. You’d think that a religious organisation would care that bishops and archbishops and cardinals sinned so appallingly, no matter if it was twenty or thirty or forty years ago - no matter what the law says about the delay in reporting making it impossible to bring charges.

It would appear likely that they’re very, very aware that if the police are allowed to investigate and the courts bring charges, on behalf of children who were molested in the 1970s and earlier, the resultant lawsuits could really damage them financially. In short, I suspect the church hierarchy knows well that there are a lot of people out there who were molested by priests in the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s, and who - if they’re allowed to bring suit - may do real financial damage to the Church. Hence their assertion that it’s just wrong that victims from more than a generation ago should be allowed to report the crimes committed against them by the Church….

Isn’t this proposed legislation going to remove the SOL for civil liability, rather than criminal?

Whoops.  Yes it does (reminds self to RTFA next time).  I have much , much less of a problem removing SOLs in civil matters.  A vanishingly small problem in this case.

Uh, have the people arguing against the longer statute of limitations noticed the case that provoked this change? 50,000 still pictures and 100 reels of movie film are really all the documentary evidence anyone needs. None of the victims could have sued before, because they didn’t have enough evidence to get a court to compel the hospital to open its records and disclose what it knew about the abuse at the time. Under the old law, someone for whom there existed dozens of pictures of rape and hospital administration records acknowledging that complaints of abuse were being ignored would a) be able to sue or b) be completely unable to sue depending on the precise date those photos were developed.

And that’s the thing with the Catholic Church: in many cases the abuse isn’t being contested, the only thing being contested is the extent to which the church as a corporate body knew about the abuse and covered it up or further enabled it. And for those issues the documentary record, once opened, is pretty darn clear. So the usual arguments about statute of limitations don’t really apply. Immortal corporations really shouldn’t have the benefit of a rule that says “if you commit unlawful acts and keep meticulous records of them, but manage to keep those records hidden for long enough, you don’t have to pay anything for your misdeeds.” It’s against public policy.

Pederasty, otoh, doesn’t tend to go away. And liquor stores and gas stations tell the police they’ve been robbed. Children often wait 20 years to admit to being molested.

I thought I posted a reponse to this but it disappeared. Hopefully I have not transgressed the boundaries here.

Each successive crime of a serial molester sets a new clock running, so the molester can still be punished for his more recent crimes.  The point is that those seeking justice must be fair to the defendants as well as the victims. Memories do distort, and the accused may not have kept, say, their dayplanners for a half-century. Thirty years may be the wrong SoL, because of the waiting/shame factor, but the fairest overall solution may be to set it to 35 years. Or 25 years. Absent a persuasive argument, I don’t see the fairness in eliminating it altogether.

IANAL, so can someone please explain to me why the Catholic church (and Hector B) seem to think that anyone who claims to have been abused will be handed a big settlement simply on their say-so.  I know that civil courts have a lower standard than criminal courts but you still have to have some evidence, don’t you?  I thought the point of removing SOL was to keep the church (and as I understand it the law would apply to any case, not just Catholic cases) from hiding evidence so long the victim simply ran out of time.  In other words, the evidence probably exists and this is the only way to force the church to hand it over.

Memories do distort, and the accused may not have kept, say, their dayplanners for a half-century.

This is the core issue: we’re talking about removing the SOL on civil lawsuits not against the molestors, but against the global organisation (essentially a multi-national corporate entity) that employed them and covered up for them.

This organisation has a well-known policy of keeping secret archives for periods of centuries. More to the point, it has been exposed by its former “fixers” as having a policy of keeping two sets of books when it comes to personnel records—records that specifically detail heinous misdeeds of its employees and managers that have done lasting, sometimes multi-generational damage to individuals and families.

If the victims’ memories distort, as I agree they sometimes do, then it’s the Church’s right to prove otherwise. But that would require them to submit all of their personnel records to discovery, and it’s clear from articles like this that the Church knows that process won’t turn out well for them.

I thought the point of removing SOL was to keep the church (and as I understand it the law would apply to any case, not just Catholic cases) from hiding evidence so long the victim simply ran out of time.

The clock stops running when the victim files suit, and the discovery process will disgorge whatever evidence is in the archives. Sue now, to prevent the personnel records from going into the shredder per some SOP record retention policy. (A friend at Intel reports that every year they must delete every email they received, lest it come back to bite them at some future date.) Once suit has been filed, no records can be destroyed lest they be sanctioned for spoliation of evidence.

Sue now, to prevent the personnel records from going into the shredder per some SOP record retention policy. (A friend at Intel reports that every year they must delete every email they received, lest it come back to bite them at some future date.)

If their PR spin on this problem wasn’t so arrogant and incompetent (the Freemasons!), I’m sure they’d already be having a Reagan-style shredding party. “Just making confetti for weddings, dontchaknow?” As it is, these scumbags probably still think it’s business as usual.

The proposed increase in the SOL is meant to allow a plaintiff who’s (for example) in his mid-40s now to sue the Church over an incident that happened when he was 10—i.e. when he was a minor who didn’t understand he had legal recourse, and whose judgment and self-esteem sustained long-term damage due to a heinous crime he thought was unique to him. The 30-year limit shuts that plaintiff out, and does not serve justice against an organisation that’s known to leverage long-term secrecy and cover-ups to protect itself.

It’s good to see that if a corporation like DOW Chemicals dumps toxic waste that takes 200+ years (like they were a major contractor for the Hanford Nuclear Plant) that people suffering from the effects after 15 years when the statute of limitations expires on hazardous waste dumping expires can’t bring suit against and immortal entity like a corporation.

This is similar.

This of course doesn’t even touch the idea that an organized religion, you know, a moral authority refused to take the most moral and correct path to not just expel but ensure that proper legal authorities are made aware of illegal activities.

I don’t know about you, but my employer has people dedicated to ensuring ethics and compliance.

The 30-year limit shuts that plaintiff out

Our tort system serves two purposes: to compensate victims and stop future harm.  Delaying this process means some victims will never be compensated, and makes the deterrent effect irrelevant. As it is we’re punishing Obama for the sins of the Nixon administration (18+ 30 year SoL).

Our tort system serves two purposes: to compensate victims and stop future harm.  Delaying this process means some victims will never be compensated, and makes the deterrent effect irrelevant.

As noted, the age of the victims (often minors at the time of the crime) as well as the age and career records of the alleged perpetrators, combined with the age and policy of the defendant organisation that covered up for the perps the makes this a special case where 30 years is not enough.

By the terms you state, the current SoL neither allows for compensation from the Church for childhood victims of Church-enabled molestation who are now aged 40+, nor does it prevent further harm by discouraging the Church from its policies of long-term secrecy and cover-ups. That is not justice served.

Each successive crime of a serial molester sets a new clock running, so the molester can still be punished for his more recent crimes.

Well that works out great, except when the recent victims are, you know, children and it might be very difficult for them to come forward for a long, long time.  The abuser won’t get punished if he can constantly make sure that each new victim won’t testify until after the statute of limitations runs out on each crime.  So you have older victims who are willing to testify but the statute of limitations has run out, and younger victims who are still to traumatized to testify.  It sounds like a damn great deal for any abuser.

The proposed change to the law would put “all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk,”

I just. What. Unbelievable. Do you think maybe, just mayyyybe, it was RAPING CHILDREN AND ABETTING CHILD RAPISTS that put your precious goddamn Church at risk?

“It all started when he hit me back!” This willingness to childishly blame someone else for one’s own crimes and their consequences should be enough all by itself to make the Church irrelevant as any kind of moral authority.

As for Dr George Reardon. Holy shit. I’ve known for some time that as a woman of “childbearing age” I’m not safe in a Catholic hospital, since my life and self would be considered worthless in comparison to my potential babymaking capacity; but now it’s crystal clear that children and teens aren’t safe in Catholic hospitals either. That is terrifying.

What catgirl and paul said.

Also, given that the most senior cardinals in the hierarchy are still refusing to admit that their problem is not only the child abusers, but the support and protection the abusers received from the hierarchy… well.

A few years ago, someone I worked with was arrested for child abuse. It was pretty horrible - he was molesting young children, taking photos, and sharing them with his paedo friends. The shock at finding out someone I knew - you know, well enough to have a coffee with - was someone who could do that, was pretty bad.

But: the police descended on the workplace, and they searched it. They checked every computer. They looked in every desk.  They found that his employers were associated with him only by his employment - there was evidence on his work computer (he’d viewed files at work and deleted them, evidently not realising that a forensic examination would find them).  But there was nothing else on any other work computer, nothing else in the workplace. No one there had known until the police showed up that day.

If we had - if his managers had known, if his colleagues had known, if there was any evidence that anyone he’d worked with had known what he was doing - things would have been, rightly, much worse for us. As it was - it was horrible to know what he’d done. Worse yet, as the details came out at the trial. But no one there tried or wanted to cover up for him. Why would we do something like that?

But the Catholic church would. And did. Over, and over, and over again.

And until they acknowledge that that’s t heir problem - their sin, in their terminology - they’ll never get better.

catgirl—With no statute of limitations, nonagenarians in the year 2050 will be able to sue for abuse that allegedly occured in 1972.  Who would be alive to contradict him?

“Who would be alive to contradict him?”

You are aware that our legal system requires at least a very general demonstration of guilt before judgments are handed down, right?  It’s not exactly the “Insert accusation, get a conviction” scenario you’re positing, here.

pm: for a civil suit the standard of proof is “more likely than not.” Put it this way: has the church won any of these cases so far? The jury would have to be thinking, “Why would this old old man be lying?”

With no statute of limitations, nonagenarians in the year 2050 will be able to sue for abuse that allegedly occured in 1972.  Who would be alive to contradict him?

In this unlikely case, the Church (i.e. the defendant in the civil lawsuit) would be “alive” to attempt to contradict him. The diocese in question would have to produce personnel records regarding the alleged abusive priest, just as it would now. If the priest was suspected of being shuffled in or out of the diocese, the Vatican would have to pony up records as well. The SoL is really meant to protect individual humans with a limited lifespan—semi-immortal corporate entities don’t get that privilege when it comes to enablement of heinous crimes.

“Why not sue now?”, you may ask. That’s the plaintiff’s business, not ours. But since waiting another 30 or so years with no SoL isn’t going to yield different results in terms of award, the reasons for delay are probably related to misplaced personal shame and guilt often associated with being a victim of sexual abuse or assault—and in cases like this, such shame and guilt is encouraged by the potential defendant organisation.

Put it this way: has the church won any of these cases so far? The jury would have to be thinking, “Why would this old old man be lying?”

First of all, it’s not like judges don’t issue instructions to juries in civil cases. Second, it’s not like the Church is stuck with third-rate attorneys who can’t anticipate such a question and raise plausible answers to it.

If the accused is still capable of molesting children, then any charges of previous molestations are entirely relevent.  If the accused’s superiors are still capable of covering up crimes, charges are relevent. If 31-plus-18-minus-[age]-year-old testimony can potentially stop abusive behavior TODAY, tomorrow, next year—-it’s relevent.

Statutes of limitations limit the pool of people who can stand up and start the ball rolling to stop present-day abuse.

“The jury would have to be thinking, “Why would this old old man be lying?””

If the old, old man is asking for money, I’m pretty sure most juries are not so entirely braindead that they can’t grasp at least one plausible explanation, even if the Church somehow lost all its records and had to settle for an ambulance-chaser as their defense attorney.  You’re still acting like anyone making a claim is going to automatically get what they want out of court, like that’s somehow a standard we’ve actually achieved for the victims of sexual violence in this country.

anyone making a claim is going to automatically get what they want out of court, like that’s somehow a standard we’ve actually achieved for the victims of sexual violence in this country

Three key differences between the pedopriest situation and the typical victim of sexual violence:

1. The victims are largely male. Thanks to the patriarchy, male victims are taken more seriously.

2. The victims were children. Only pedoes themselves would think of the usual excuses for sexual assaulters like “they asked for it,” or “considering how provocatively they dressed, I’m not surprised,” or “what did they think was going to happen when they were invited into the rectory?”

3. The perpetrators were priests. Unlike the typical guy who can identify all too well with a “date rapist,” few people can empathize with a celibate Man of God. Those who can are likely to think of the priests’ pastoral responsibility to bring children to God, and to think that celibates have taken a solemn vow to be celibate.