California Gov. Jerry Brown should veto an abuse lawsuit bill that is
“flagrantly discriminatory” and “targeted at the Catholic Church,” says
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
“Going after the Catholic schools today for cases of abuse that took
place decades ago, while exempting the public schools – at a time when
there is a serious problem with the sexual molestation of minors in the
public schools – is irrational, discriminatory and grossly unjust,” the
Catholic League president said in a Sept. 10 letter to Gov. Brown.
His comments come in response to S.B. 131, a bill now headed to the
governor’s desk that would lift the statute of limitations on abuse
lawsuits only for private institutions, but not for public schools.
Donohue said the bill is “indefensible” because under its provisions “no
one who was abused in public schools before 2009 can sue the teacher,
the school, or the school district, but if someone was abused in a
Catholic school when JFK was president, he can sue the teacher (if he is
alive), the school, and the diocese.”
Last Friday, the state senate passed the bill by a vote of 21-8. Gov.
Brown has until Oct. 13 to sign the bill into law or veto it.
The legislation would lift the statute of limitations on child sex abuse
lawsuits against private schools and private employers who failed to
take action against sexual abuse by employees or volunteers.
It would
allow alleged victims younger than 31 to sue employers of abusers,
extending present age limit for alleged victims presently set at 26
years-old.
However, the bill specifically exempts public schools and other
government institutions from lawsuits. It also exempts the actual
perpetrators of the abuse from civil action in some cases, while leaving
their employers vulnerable.
“Does anyone doubt that a bill that applied only to the public schools,
exempting all private ones, would be roundly condemned? So should this
bill,” said Donohue.
He rejected claims that contemporary Catholic institutions are “rife
with sexual abuse,” citing data from the John Jay College of Criminal
Justice saying that most clergy sex abuse took place between the
mid-1960s and the mid-1980s.
Donohue said that about 90 percent of California children attend public
schools, where thousands of cases of sexual abuse are alleged each year.
The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing says action is taken
in about 800 of these cases.
Donohue pointed to an “outrageous” recent sexual abuse scandal at
Miramonte Elementary School in Los Angeles, where several teachers
enticed their young students to play extremely lewd sex games.
The scandal resulted in the dismissal of 100 teachers across the public
school district. An audit found that the district failed to report
teachers accused of sex abuse and faulted California public school
districts’ poor communication in informing other districts about
employees accused of misconduct.
Donohue also contended that attorneys were the “big winners” in abuse
lawsuits filed against Catholic institutions in the past decade, taking
hundreds of millions in fees.
Nearly 1,000 claims – some dating back to the 1950s – have been filed
against the Catholic Church in California since a 2003 exemption to the
statute of limitations, with legal awards totaling to $1.2 billion.
Donahue charged that if the latest bill is enacted, dioceses will be
forced to take money from parishes and schools, “hurting innocent
Catholics, many of whom are not wealthy, so they can pay for claims so
old that no one can reasonably disprove them.”
Kevin Eckery, a spokesman for the California Catholic Conference, told
CNA/EWTN News June 11 that the Catholic Church in California can no
longer rely on insurance policies and sales of property and other assets
to meet the costs of any new lawsuits.
A new round of lawsuits could force dioceses to close schools, he said.
Lawsuits could force the Diocese of Stockton to declare bankruptcy.
Other private institutions such as the YMCA, the YWCA, and the
California Council of Non-Profit Organizations have also opposed the
bill.
The Wall Street Journal has criticized the bill as a “nonprofit
shakedown” that targets the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, and the
“political enemies” of the legislature, in which Democrats hold a
supermajority of seats.
The Catholic Church has implemented “stiff penalties” for abuse
offenders and mandates suspected abuse reporting, Donahue said. Catholic
schools now require abuse prevention training, while most public school
districts do not.
He compared the bill to allowing the National Guard to police a low-crime neighborhood, while ignoring other communities.
“Catholics in California are wondering what in the world is going on
when lawmakers are giving the public schools a pass when those same
schools are the source of most of the problems,” he said.