Facing lawsuits, Archdiocese of Washington challenges law empowering abuse survivors
The Catholic Church will do anything to avoid accountability
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More than a month after a Maryland law eliminated the statute of limitations for survivors of child sexual abuse, the Archdiocese of Washington (D.C.) is arguing in court that the law is illegal.
The law in question capped how much money a survivor could receive—based on whether they were suing a public institution, a private one, or an individual—but it allowed those who had suffered abuse decades earlier to receive justice.
Just before the law went into effect, the Archdiocese of Baltimore declared bankruptcy, a move that would allow certain parts of the Church to continue functioning while limiting the damages the archdiocese would inevitably face. (The move also puts an expiration date on when people could sue the Church for damages, nullifying that aspect of the new law.)
And now the Archdiocese of Washington, which is also affected by the change, is arguing in court (in two separate cases) that the new law violates the Maryland Constitution. If they’re successful with the challenge, it could halt a class-action lawsuit brought by survivors of sexual abuse.
The basic argument is that, by allowing survivors to sue their abusers long after the crimes took place, it violates due process.
In short, the Church claims that the Child Victims Act is unconstitutional because a 2017 law, which gave survivors some more pathways to justice than in the past, said no survivor of child sexual abuse could sue beyond the age of 38. It also said defendants who didn’t commit the crimes, like the Catholic Church itself, couldn’t be sued over those newly revived claims; this is known as a “statute of repose.” The newer law lifted both those restrictions, so the Church is now arguing that the legislature can’t undo a previously granted right.
“The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington is asserting its legal defenses in the cases filed against it,” the archdiocese said in a statement.
These challenges were predictable, though. Maryland’s Attorney General Anthony Brown said, when the bill was being debated, that the proposed law was constitutional and that his office would defend it if and when it was challenged. He reiterated those comments this week:
“As I advised the General Assembly during the 2023 session, I can, in good faith, defend the constitutionality of the Child Victims Act, pursuant to the authorities and opportunities presented under Maryland law, and will do so,” Brown said in a statement.
The law firm that filed a class-action lawsuit said before that their (roughly 100) clients “suffered a wide variety of serious physical, emotional, and financial injuries” at the hands of clergy members and therefore deserve to have their day in court. One of the attorneys involved in the case added that, by challenging this law (or, in the case of the Baltimore Archdiocese, filing for bankruptcy), the Church was “trying to protect admitted wrongdoers and sexual abusers.”
It’s important to remember why the Catholic Church is trying so hard to avoid accountability. Earlier this year, Attorney General Brown released his office’s 463-page report investigating sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The four-year project, which was the result of a Grand Jury investigation, found that over 600 children (“but the number is likely far higher”) were abused by 156 predators working with the Catholic Church since the 1940s. Most of the predators were now dead, but some of them (redacted in the report) were still alive and not previously suspected of any wrongdoing. The names of Church officials who helped cover up their alleged crimes were also redacted in the public report. In many cases, the abuse continued even after survivors came forward with their stories. Because Church officials didn’t take immediate action, the predators had a green light to continue abusing little kids.
With the release of that report, and the passage of the new law, there was hope that many survivors of abuse would finally realize there was a path forward to file claims against their abusers and the institution that harbored them.
We shouldn’t be surprised that both archdioceses are doing everything they can to prevent survivors from getting the justice they deserve. They’re putting far more thought into how they can play defense than they ever did to remove the problematic Catholic leaders in the first place.
I’ve said this before, but the true punishment for the Church won’t come from any of the lawsuits. The institution will only suffer if and when there’s a mass exodus of worshipers who call themselves Catholic. The people who still attend or support the Catholic Church with their time or money are complicit in their actions. It’s not too late to break ties. Tradition is no excuse to prop up a criminal enterprise.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
Isn't it funny that one of the richest religions in the world keeps filing for bankruptcy to avoid paying its victims?
Doesn't sound very Christian, does it (or maybe it does).
The systematic sexual abuse of children was the church's dirty little secret for centuries. Given the scale of the problem and the relatively small size of the Catholic clergy, there is simply no way that abuse could have ever been anything but common knowledge within the church hierarchy. Until these horrors began becoming public, in one hundred percent of all cases, the church circled the wagons and protected the priests. More often than not, they blamed the victims. 'How dare these people make such an accusation against a man of God!!!!' The Catholic church deserves to be put out of business, as do many other religious organizations. I'm beyond sick of the clergy hiding behind their clerical collars and Bibles to justify the despicable.