Attorney Ray Boucher helped secure a record $660 million settlement
from the Los Angeles Archdiocese on behalf of more than 500 people
molested by priests.
Five days after the settlement was announced, his
wife left him.
Eric MacLeish, the hard-charging lawyer whose work
for victims helped spur the resignation of Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law
in 2002, later suffered a breakdown, stopped practicing law and got
divorced.
And Steve Rubino, once such an observant Catholic he
couldn't believe a priest would molest a child, lost his faith and
eventually retired from the law.
"It moved me completely out of whatever religious context I was in — completely," he said.
The
sex scandal that rocked the nation's Roman Catholic Church took a
fearsome personal toll on some of the top lawyers who dared to challenge
the institution.
While many of them ultimately reaped large fees
for their services, the all-consuming workload, the pressure of battling
the church and the stress of listening to graphic accounts of
children's suffering were debilitating.
"No one can handle these
cases and come out of it the same," said Sylvia Demarest, a lawyer who
helped win a $119.6 million verdict against the Diocese of Dallas in
1997 and later built a national database on clergy sex abuse cases.
Demarest,
now semiretired, said she grew frustrated with her inability to heal
the wounds suffered by her clients. "What happens to kids when they're
abused and what happens to their brains when they are abused is
something that we don't know how to fix," she said.
The crisis
exploded in Boston in 2002, after internal church documents released
publicly showed that church leaders for decades had shuffled sexually
abusive priests from parish to parish.
The scandal spread across the
country as thousands of lawsuits were filed by people who claimed they
had been victimized.
For MacLeish, the clergy cases reawakened memories of being sexually abused as a child.
MacLeish
and other lawyers won an $85 million settlement in Boston in 2003 for
more than 500 victims. But in the months after the landmark settlement
was announced, MacLeish began to unravel. He developed insomnia and
nausea, lost 40 pounds and couldn't work.
He was rattled by the
image of a 9-year-old boy who was repeatedly sodomized over nine hours
by a priest. The boy buried his bloody underwear so his mother wouldn't
find out.
"The idea of him going off into the woods and burying his underwear, that really got to me," MacLeish said.
MacLeish
had been sexually abused by a family friend during a camping trip at
15. And he had memories of being molested at an English boarding school
he attended as a boy.
"I began to realize why I had been doing
this work and how much my own abuse had affected me," he said. He said
his pursuit of the church "was absolutely never about money."
He added:
"The wealth I received was the knowledge that I had really helped my
clients and helped to change the Catholic Church."
Rubino, who
retired last year after more than 20 years of representing clergy
sex-abuse victims, was incredulous after a family friend came to him in
1987 and said a priest had sexually assaulted her 14-year-old son.
"I
said, `Well, that's impossible. Priests are celibate. What are you
talking about?'" recalled Rubino, who grew up in a large Italian
Catholic family.
Rubino, whose law office was in Margate City,
N.J., spent the next 15 years becoming a canon law expert. He traveled
all over the U.S and to Ireland, Canada and Australia to represent
victims and help other lawyers. Story after story of abuse left Rubino
disheartened about the Catholic Church.
"I was a true believer. I
said my Hail Marys, my Act of Contrition, I learned Latin, I served
Mass, I believed in God," he said. "I don't do any of that now."
At
the height of the scandal, Rubino was working 16- to 20-hour days and
traveling constantly. His wife and three children resented it.
"While I
was (home), I was never there," he said. "I was a second away from the
next text, the next e-mail, the next phone call from a client."
Rubino's marriage survived, but Boucher's did not. Boucher's wife left him right after the 2007 settlement in Los Angeles.
"She
just said, `Look, you're on top of the world, the press is surrounding
you, I haven't accomplished what I want to accomplish in life, and I
just don't feel like I can stay with you,'" Boucher said.
(Boucher's
ex-wife, Christine Roberts, declined to comment.)
Before that,
Boucher had plowed through hundreds of cases in Los Angeles, and mostly
managed to "box it up and store it away."
But, at times, the enormity of
the pain caused by the abuse was overwhelming.
In 2004, Boucher
was editing DVDs of victims describing how they were raped or otherwise
molested by a priest. He saw a pile of about 150 DVDs ready to be mailed
to Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony.
Each DVD cover had a picture of
the victim as a child, as they were when they were assaulted.
"I was stunned. I looked at them, and I'm sure I started to cry," Boucher recalled. "I will never lose that image."
MacLeish's
marriage also ended in divorce. Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress
disorder, he began seeing a psychologist. Within two months, they were
sleeping together and their affair led to his divorce, MacLeish said.
MacLeish,
now a professor who teaches civil rights and criminal procedure at
Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, said he doesn't regret the
work he did, despite the toll it took on him and his family.
"There
is not one case that I've heard of since 2004 where a known pedophile
has been placed by the church into an organization where he would be
able to do it again," he said.
Rubino, 61, now spends time with
his family and works as chief executive of a sports performance training
center for kids. Rubino said it is a respite from the work he used to
do.
"For the hundreds of damaged young lives I represented, the
kids at (the center) are at the opposite end of the spectrum," he said.
Boucher, 53, continues to represent victims.
"I
can't imagine walking away from people who are suffering from the
isolation of sexual abuse," he said.
"I don't know how — no matter what
the personal, emotional toll might be — I don't know how you walk away
from that."
SIC: AP/INT'L