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	Church, Lawyers Latch on to Federal Case Law's Validity, Attempt to Prove Cover-ups of Abuse Are at Issue By Onell R. Soto Union-Tribune [San Diego CA] August 29, 2005 Lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church and for people who say they were abused by priests are using a case in San Diego federal court to do what they can't do in state court. Church officials are trying to invalidate the 2002 state law that lifted the statute of limitations for bringing decades-old civil claims of sexual abuse. The lawyers for people who say they are victims are using it to expose sometimes graphic allegations of abuse and what they call cover-ups in a series of recent declarations. Such arguments can't be made in state court because lawyers on both sides agreed to seek mediation for about 140 lawsuits filed against the church in San Diego after a nationwide scandal prompted the change in the law. None of the cases filed in San Diego has gone to trial. In most of the cases, lawyers on both sides agreed not to take depositions, demand documents or ask a judge for legal rulings. Church officials say discussions are moving forward, while lawyers for people who claim abuse say they have ground to a halt. Those lawyers filed documents in federal court – including two affidavits from a former priest now in prison – that they say make the case thatRoman Catholic officials in San Diego knew years ago about problem priests, but moved them around to other parishes. Micheal Webb, a lawyer for the San Diego diocese, sharply disputed that is what the documents show. While questioning their relevance and credibility, Webb said they indicate a compassionate effort to provide psychological treatment to the priests. Judge William Q. Hayes is set to hear arguments from both sides Sept. 8 in U.S. District Court. First federal review Hayes' rulings, particularly if he finds the state law unconstitutional, could have a broad impact on other suits around the state, experts said. Two Northern California judges have ruled against the church in similar cases and a third judge has ruled constitutional questions should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Hayes is the first federal judge to be asked to review the law. About 1,000 people have sued the Roman Catholic Church in California. The suits came as the church defended itself against allegations across the country that its leaders ignored accusations or covered up for abusive clergy for decades. Dioceses from Boston to Orange County have reached multimillion-dollar settlements with accusers. In San Diego, fewer than five of the lawsuits have been settled, mostly with church payouts. Church officials also say they have reached agreements with about 35 people who went to them directly rather than going to court. About two-thirds of those resulted in payouts, the balance in promises of counseling. A judge in Los Angeles Superior Court is coordinating 140 San Diego cases along with several hundred similar cases from throughout Southern California. Civil litigation is the only avenue in the courts left to people who say they were abused by priests long ago. Prosecutors had filed criminal cases against priests accused of abuse, but in 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a California law allowing those prosecutions. The case before Hayes involves an Escondido woman who is suing the Sisters of the Precious Blood, an Ohio religious order. It was filed in federal court because the woman and the religious order are in separate states. San Diego church officials got involved in the case because the priest in question worked for the local diocese. The California Attorney General's Office jumped in because the church asked the judge to invalidate a state law. The law allowed people who were abused as children to sue employers who know about sexual abuse by an employee but fail to "take reasonable steps and to implement reasonable safeguards to avoid acts of unlawful sexual conduct in the future by that person," said lawyers for the attorney general. Under the law, sexual abuse victims had until the end of 2003 to file suit, or within three years of realizing they were abused. Also submitting papers to the judge are the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the California Catholic Conference on one side and, on the other side, the National Center for Victims of Crime and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Church officials say the law should be overturned because it is an example of "anti-Catholic discrimination" that unjustly targets them. They say it is unfair because it allows lawsuits based on events alleged to have occurred long ago and that relevant documents may have been destroyed and witnesses may have died. "Forcing defendants to go to trial without the means of effective defense is little more than a compelled transfer of the assets of the Catholic Church to the alleged victims and their lawyers," a church lawyer, Lee W. Potts, wrote in a court filing last week. Lawyers on the other side say the law allows those who were abused to go after the institutions that should have protected them. They submitted to Hayes a stack of documents that may go to the heart of the legal claims against the San Diego diocese. Hayes has not announced whether he will consider them. Church lawyers are asking him to set aside the documents, claiming they are designed to "elicit sympathy for the purported victims and attempt to denigrate, ridicule, or scorn the Catholic Church." Sensitive statements In the documents, people detail incidents involving four priests who were accused of sexually abusing children, including a former priest now in prison as a convicted child molester. That former priest, Edward Anthony Rodrigue, 68, said in his declarations that he talked to a bishop about abuse accusations. Psychological treatment was ordered and Rodrigue was allowed to continue in the ministry. The bishop, Leo T. Maher, died in 1991. In a nearly 30-year church career beginning in 1962, Rodrigue said he was transferred repeatedly after parents complained to church leaders he had molested their children. He said he met with Maher in San Diego early in 1976 and was given a letter, signed by 10 parents, accusing him of sexual activity with altar boys. He said he spent almost a year in treatment centers in Massachusetts and Berkeley before going to a parish in Ontario, at the time part of the San Diego diocese. In 1979, Rodrigue reported to a colleague that he had been "seduced" by a 16-year-old boy and "things were out of control for me and that I was in deep trouble." Rodrigue was given a six-week vacation and allowed to return to his parish, although he was ordered to see a therapist. later transferred to a Loma Linda parish. He resigned the priesthood in 1991, after several more accusations and years of psychological treatment at church expense. The declarations are Rodrigue's first public statements since 19 lawsuits were filed against the church over his actions. Lawyers also provided to Hayes a police report from San Bernardino County that describes Rodrigue saying, during a polygraph exam, that he abused five or six boys a year over 20 years. He said most of his victims were altar boys. In other documents, people describe abuse and what they told or tried to tell church officials about it. A former parishioner in El Centro said that, as a teenager, he called diocese offices twice in the mid-1970s to complain about Rodrigue, who he said sexually assaulted him. "On both occasions the individuals from the Bishop's office who answered the phone instructed me not to talk about priests in that manner and then hung up the phone on me," the man said in the court documents. An Imperial Valley woman recalled that in 1976, her 14-year-old son returned from a church camping trip saying that Rodrigue, the priest in charge of the church in the tiny town of Heber, had done "things that were bad" with altar boys. A group of parents gathered to talk about the priest. "Some of the parents talked about suing," the woman said in her statement to the court. "But we were very involved with the church and didn't want to do that." So they went to others in the church, she wrote. "One of the nuns met with us and told us to leave it to God," the woman said. "There was divine justice." People are stepping up to oppose church efforts to minimize what happened in the past and deflect criticism of top officials, said Jaime Romo, a leader of the San Diego chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which regularly holds rallies and distributes fliers to keep attention on the issue. "People are committed to bringing truth forward," Romo said. "There's more of a critical mass developing." Church cites context Church lawyers say the way the church handled problem priests has to be looked at in the context of what was going on in society at the time, when the medical belief was that counseling would be enough. Webb said church officials believed that "treatment is what these people needed and they can be corrected." He said it is unfair to punish current leaders and church members by reviewing decisions made a generation or two ago. "The evidence we need to defend, given the great age of these claims, is now gone," Webb said. All the former San Diego bishops are dead. "We don't know how they would respond," Webb said. "What would Bishop Maher say?" Advocates for those who say they have been abused contend the church's position is a charade to postpone compensating victims and to cover up wrongs, including a practice of moving abusive priests to other parishes to avoid public embarrassment. Roman Catholic bishops have a special relationship with their priests, said Bishop Robert H. Brom, who has led the San Diego diocese since 1990. Theirs is not a traditional employer-employee relationship; it is based on theology and church teachings, Brom said in a court declaration asking the federal judge to overturn the California law. "Instead of a bishop employing a priest for a job, he ordains him for lifelong ministry," Brom said. Because such decisions are based on discerning God's intentions, they are not casually undone or second-guessed. As a result, bishops' decisions on how to deal with priests "are always based on beliefs in reconciliation, redemption and an ability to reform that are fundamental to the Catholic religion." In a court filing, lawyers for the California Attorney General's Office said Brom's declaration is beside the point. "The church can resolve charges of sexual abuse against a priest in any way it sees fit," they said. They said the church needs to answer people who claim its leaders knew about sexual abuse of children but didn't take reasonable steps needed to keep others from being abused, as the law requires.
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