« Ind. Decisions - Upcoming oral arguments this week | Main | Courts - Still more on "McDonald's sanctioned in strip-search case" »

Monday, December 22, 2008

Courts - "Abuse Victims Seek Court Date With Vatican"

Here is an interesting legal story I woke up to this morning, reported by Barbara Bradley Hagerty of NPR. Here are a few quotes:

Until recently, no federal court has allowed a case to proceed against the Vatican — and few really believed the Holy See would ever be open to lawyers or its treasury subject to money damages. It is considered a foreign state with sovereign immunity.

But there are exceptions to the immunity, including one called the "tortious act" exception. If Turner can show that U.S. bishops are officials of the Vatican, and that they harmed children by failing to report sex abuse, then he has a chance of getting to trial.

Recently, a federal court in Oregon and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio said they're open to this idea.

"Never before has a court said that victims of childhood sex abuse can come into U.S. courts and hold a foreign nation such as the Vatican accountable," says Turner's attorney, William McMurry, who won the preliminary victory in the Sixth Circuit.

It's a small step with huge implications. McMurry is readying demands for documents from the Vatican's secret archives, as well as a witness list that includes Pope Benedict XVI, who oversaw all investigations in his previous position as Cardinal Josef Ratzinger. * * *

As Exhibit A, McMurry points to a document, called "Crimen Sollicitationis," signed by Pope John XXIII. The document tells bishops how to handle, among other things, child sex-abuse cases. The document was written in 1962 but only surfaced five years ago.

When former Benedictine priest Patrick Wall saw it, he thought, "Oh my, I can't believe they just handed over the map!"

Wall used to handle sex-abuse cases for the church. He left the priesthood and is now an investigator for plaintiffs.

"This is how I was instructed as a priest to handle the different accusations," he recalls. "I had never seen the document but, lo and behold, that's exactly the process I was taught as a 27-year-old priest of how to do this."

The document states that abuse cases must be "pursued in a most secretive way," and that all involved be "restrained by a perpetual silence." That includes the bishop, the priest prosecutor and the judge, the accuser and the accused, even the notary.

"Every single person involved in the case is absolutely obligated to the grave to remain silent," Wall says. "Otherwise they will be excommunicated and damned to hell."

But Nicholas Cafardi, a law professor at Duquesne Law School, says this document applies only to internal church trials, and has nothing to do with reporting abuse to prosecutors.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 22, 2008 08:15 AM
Posted to Courts in general