Jeff Anderson, the Minnesota attorney whose firm has pursued more
than 1,000 sex-abuse cases against the Catholic Church in the United
States - including several in Wisconsin - is launching a new
London-based firm to pursue similar litigation in the United Kingdom,
where revelations of abuse exploded last year.
The new
practice, a collaboration with London-based solicitor Ann Olivarius,
will announce its first lawsuit, filed Monday in federal Court in
Minneapolis.
The lawsuit names as defendants the Diocese of Clogher in
Ireland and Father Francis Markey, an Irish priest who is accused of
molesting children in Ireland, England and the U.S. Markey was
extradited from the U.S. to Ireland last year.
"This touches
on the international movement of these guys - not just from parish to
parish but state to state, and that's the problem," Anderson said by
telephone from London on Monday.
"It's a global problem."
Anderson
represents plaintiffs in about a dozen civil fraud cases pending against
the Archdiocese of Milwaukee over its handling of sex-abuse cases, and
in a federal suit in Milwaukee against the Vatican.
The fraud cases were
stalled last week after the Archdiocese sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection.
SIC: JSO/USA