Supreme Court says Files have to be turned over.

by Pureheart 11 Replies latest jw friends

  • Pureheart
    Pureheart

    Ruling on Diocese's Privacy May Open Flood of Material

    By SAM DILLON

    Over the nine years since Leland White sued the Roman\

    Catholic church in Rhode Island seeking damages, asserting that his parish priest sexually abused him in 1970, eight other men have

    lodged similar accusations against the same priest, who has pleaded guilty to criminal abuse charges. But the Diocese of

    Providence has given little quarter.

    Citing its First Amendment religious rights, the diocese has

    refused to turn over thousands of documents requested by

    Mr. White and nearly 40 other Catholics who have sued the

    Rhode Island church, saying they were abused by priests. For

    nearly a decade, the courts have upheld the church.

    But that appeared to change this week when a state justice,

    citing the American bishops' acknowledgment last month at their

    meeting in Dallas that the church's culture of secrecy had hurt the

    church and its flock, ruled that the First Amendment could not be

    construed as a blanket shield protecting the church from requests

    for information in inquiries into priestly assaults on children.

    "By no elastic stretch of the most fertile imagination can one

    rationally conclude that such information or any such communication

    deserves or merits confidentiality as expressions of religious

    freedom," Justice Robert D. Krause of State Superior Court wrote

    in his ruling, issued on Monday.

    Lawyers for people who say they have been abused by priests in Rhode

    Island and across the nation called Justice Krause's ruling a watershed in

    one of the longest and hardest-fought legal cases provoked by priestly

    sexual misconduct. It underlined the way the American bishops' self-criticism

    and pledges of more open policies on sex abuse, made at their June meeting

    in Dallas, continue to reverberate, even in the court system.

    "Judges are telling the church to stop wasting our time by coming here and trying

    to use the First Amendment to defend the indefensible," said Sylvia Demarest,

    a lawyer who won a $31 million sex abuse settlement from the Diocese of

    Dallas in 1997 and was studying Justice Krause's ruling yesterday.

    Mr. White, 46, of Arlington, Va., said in an interview that he was abused

    by the Rev. James Silva, his parish priest in Newport, R.I., in 1970, when he

    was 14. Father Silva, Mr. White said, befriended him, asked him to help answer

    the phones one night late at the rectory, then requested that he stay overnight

    and crawled into bed with him.

    After Mr. White sued Father Silva, Bishop Louis E. Gelineau and the Diocese

    of Providence in 1993, several other men stepped forward to say they had also

    been abused by Father Silva, one of them so recently that the criminal statute

    of limitations had not expired. Father Silva was charged and pleaded guilty in

    1995 to sexual abuse. The diocese has barred Father Silva from exercising his

    ministerial duties, but Karen Davis, a spokeswoman for the diocese, said she

    could not immediately specify when.

    Mr. White is one of nearly 40 Catholics who have sued the Diocese of Providence

    saying that they were abused by Father Silva and at least nine other Rhode

    Island priests. Their suits have been consolidated before one judge. They have

    sought fruitlessly for a decade to gain access to diocesan documents that church

    officials have routinely handed over in similar suits elsewhere in the legal process

    called discovery.

    "I don't know of any case around the country where so many victims have been

    in court for so long and gotten so little," said David Clohessy, the St. Louis school

    administrator who is national director of the Survivors Network for People Abused

    by Priests.

    William T. Murphy, a lawyer for the Diocese of Providence, did not say whether he

    intended to appeal Justice Krause's ruling. He said it was too early to measure the

    effect because, he said, the justice left unclear whether he intended it to be applied

    only to documents the plaintiffs might request in the future, or retroactively to many

    documents a previous judge had already ruled that the church did not have to turn

    over to the plaintiffs. The church has resisted turning over documents to the plaintiffs

    in some cases in the consolidated lawsuit, Mr. Murphy said, to protect the privacy

    of Rhode Island Catholics who have given the church confidential information about

    abusive priests.

    "This ruling raises more questions than it answers because it didn't say anything

    about these prior orders," Mr. Murphy said.

    But Tim Conlon, a Providence lawyer who represents 32 of the Rhode Island plaintiffs,

    said the ruling was anything but ambiguous.

    "This is a watershed breakthrough in terms of our ability to get documents and

    information," Mr. Conlon said. "In Rhode Island the Catholic Church has made it its

    business to clog the discovery process with complex legal arguments about why

    information should not be produced and has avoided releasing actual information."

    In his order, Justice Krause cited a document written by the United States Conference

    of Bishops in Dallas, the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, in

    which the bishops acknowledged that "secrecy has created an atmosphere that

    has inhibited the healing process and in some cases enabled sexually abusive

    behavior to be repeated."

    He cited the Bishops' Charter to illustrate how public understanding of the church's

    handling of sex abuse accusations has changed rapidly, obligating everyone,

    including the courts, to re-evaluate long-held postures.

    "Circumstances have indeed changed," he wrote. "The church hierarchy became

    publicly embroiled in a nationwide clamor for reform and for public disclosure of

    matters relating to priests who sexually assault children. Insistence upon

    disclosure emanated not only from those not associated with the church, but

    indeed from bishops within the church as well."

    Pureheart

  • Mary
    Mary

    Wow! That's Fantastic!!! Geeze, I guess all the brother in the Legal Dept. at Bethel better start calling Arthur Anderson to see what alternatives they have as oppossed to turning over documents to the government!!!

  • Scully
    Scully

    I'm sure there are large orders of many document shredders making their way to Bethels all over the world as we speak...

    Love, Scully

  • nancee park
    nancee park

    The WTS files on us need brought to light. They're making it extra convenient by putting the information into their computer database. I'd love to get a copy. How about the rest of you, folks!

  • nancee park
    nancee park

    Just a quick after-thought. I've read the WTS may have some 23,000 incidents of pedophilia in those records. Think of the legal bonanza for all the victims. If each pedophile molested just 10 kids, that's 230,000 kids they raped. And let's say that's incorrect and there were only 2,300 pedophiles but 23,000 victims. Still it's horrible!! Thank you "Caesar's sword" (Ro 13:1)! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!!

  • Amazing
    Amazing

    Hi Nancee:

    WTS may have some 23,000 incidents of pedophilia

    It is actually worse than this. The WTS has over 23,000 known pedophiles on file for JWs worldwide, and likely at least 5,500 to 6,000 are in the USA. The "incidents" of pedophilia are likely 70 to 100 times greater, because the average pedophile has many victims in their criminal career.

    Edited by - Amazing on 5 July 2002 13:10:26

  • crawdad2
    crawdad2

    silent lambs victims,.............Sylvia Demarist a lawyer............won 31 million..........$31, 000,000.............. are you listening?

    Edited by - crawdad2 on 5 July 2002 14:24:42

  • avengers
    avengers

    OPEN THEM UP

  • Bona Dea
  • Amazing
    Amazing

    The Title of your post needs changing, because this is a State Superior Court ruling not a Supreme Court ruling ... as good as it is ... it will likely be challenged to the State Sppellete level, then to the State Supreme Court then to Federal District Court, and then to the Circuit Court of Appeals, then finally to the US Supremes ... where the buck will stop ... and you can bet your life that the RCC will push this all the way ... but they will lose ... and when they do ...

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