California’s Catholic bishops, in a pastoral letter to be read statewide in parishes Dec. 7-8, say the church faces a wave of sexual-abuse lawsuits because of a new state law which suspends the statute of limitations in many abuse cases for one year beginning Jan. 1.

Los Angeles archdiocesan officials said they have serious concerns about the law and are evaluating it for a possible legal challenge on constitutional grounds.

Under current law, victims of childhood sexual abuse have either until their 26th birthday or within three years of discovering emotional problems linked to a childhood molestation to take legal action.

Under the new law, that limit would be lifted for lawsuits against churches or other institutions that continued to employ known molesters who went on to abuse other victims. The only requirement would be that the lawsuit be filed in 2003, regardless of how long ago the alleged abuse occurred.

Anyone may claim sexual abuse damages during 2003 if they had not come forward before, if they had filed suit but the case was settled or dismissed on the basis of the statute of limitations, or if an attorney not admitted to practice in California represented the person when the case was settled.

The bishops’ letter to parishioners highlights the risk 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.”

In a question-and-answer document accompanying their statement, the bishops said the new law will make it easier to file fraudulent claims, which will deplete resources needed to pay genuine victims. The bishops said that most suits filed during the coming year will be new accusations, not revived cases that were once settled, and they noted that some cases may be so old they will predate insurance policies that might otherwise help pay for damages.

The bishops in their letter said that the Catholic Church has “been falsely portrayed as a large corporation with ‘deep pockets.’ In reality, the vast majority of Catholic assets belong to the people of our parishes, schools, charities and other institutions. They are not devoted to the accumulation of wealth, but to education, worship and sacraments: to the poor and other works of charity.”

The letter also lists church reforms made nationwide over the last year to protect children from abuse and which “strengthen and add to policies that have been in place in dioceses in California for many years.”

The bishops wrote that they “stand ready to respond to legitimate claims by victims of abuse” and apologize to the victims of sexual abuse by clergy.

The new law, Senate Bill 1779 sponsored by Sen. John Burton (D-San Francisco), passed unanimously through the Senate and the Assembly in May and June of this year and was signed by Gov. Gray Davis on July 10.

Larry Drivon, a Stockton plaintiff’s attorney who helped write the new law, told the Los Angeles Times Dec. 3 that a consortium of attorneys across California already has 175 to 200 lawsuits it intends to file early next year against California dioceses.

James Sweeney, legal counsel for the California Catholic Conference of Bishops, called the new law “historically unprecedented.”

“There’s never been a situation in California legal history in which the Legislature basically made a decision in the context of a religious scandal to essentially eliminate altogether a statute of limitations and allow claims which may have been barred for half a century to be revived,” he said.

Not just in the context of the current clergy sex abuse crisis, “but in future situations, where the Legislature deems it politically expedient, it can infuse chaos into the legal system,” Sweeney contended. He said “to revive claims that may be decades old and may dissolve the financial wherewithal” of charitable non-profit or religious organizations “is a troubling trend without precedent.”

Tod Tamberg, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said the archdiocese was still evaluating the new law’s constitutionality.

He said the law may be unconstitutional since it seeks to revive already litigated prior cases and to impose liability against the church for conduct where there are no longer witnesses who can confirm or deny allegations.

“It is certainly unfair in that it targets specifically the Catholic Church,” he said.

Barbara Erickson of the Catholic Voice staff in Oakland contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2001 Diocese of Sacramento - All Rights Reserved

[Catholic Herald - Cover Page]