For much of the past 25 years, Jeff Anderson has
been the American Catholic Church's bête noire.
Working out of a small
office in St Paul, Minnesota, the 63-year-old US attorney has
spearheaded more than 1,500 lawsuits against the Church, winning
millions of dollars for his clients and forcing open the doors of one of
the world's most secretive institutions.
Now the tough-talking lawyer with a taste for Zen
Buddhism has co-founded a London-based law firm to bring sex abuse
cases against churches in Britain.
The new firm, Jeff Anderson Ann
Olivarius Law, is a first attempt to create a cross-Atlantic practice
dedicated to launching legal actions on multiple continents using
aggressive litigation tactics honed for more than two decades in the US.
British law firms have long pursued the Catholic
Church after a series of historical sex abuse scandals predominantly
revealed in the early 2000s. Numerous cases have been settled, and a few
continue.
At Mr Anderson's new firm's launch
in central London, he claimed there was still room for a British
practice inspired by his US work; one diocese in Delaware recently
declared bankruptcy due to the mountain of litigation it faced.
"Survivors
have, and are, breaking their silence," he said. "It is our hope, it is
our plan, to use the very fine legal system here to get help for the
wounded, those who have been harmed, and together with them do what we
can to protect others from further harm."
Ann
Olivarius, an American-born British solicitor, came up with the idea to
form a cross-Atlantic litigation firm with Mr Anderson.
"If you followed
the clergy abuse scandal as it grew in the United States it was clear
that, if not for Jeff Anderson, the Catholic Church hierarchy and its
clergy might have never been held responsible as they are today," she
said. "It seemed to me we needed the same kind of pressure for justice
and accountability on this side of the Atlantic."
The
Catholic Church in England and Wales has brought in tough child
protection policies after the sex-abuse allegations.
The number of
accusations has since fallen, and the Vatican has held up the UK as an
example for how other churches should deal with clerical sex abuse.
But
Mr Anderson questioned whether enough had yet been done to help the
victims of the abusers and called on the Church to release any documents
it has on abusive clergy.
"The extent to which the bishops in the UK
have taken some action, we applaud that," he said. "But the extent to
which they say the problem has been dealt with, we challenge that.
"We
don't know who the actual offenders are; only they know that. Until
they come fully clean with that, children are at risk here... across the
land and across the globe."
The new firm is
paying particular attention to clerical abusers who moved between
Britain, Ireland and the US during their careers.
On Monday, the firm
launched its first civil lawsuit on behalf of an alleged American victim
of an Irish priest in his eighties who cannot be named for legal
reasons.
The suit was filed in a court in
Minneapolis.
It names as co-defendants the Diocese of Clogher in
Ireland, the Diocese of New Ulm in Minnesota and the Servants of the
Paraclete, an international Catholic congregation which was involved in
the rehabilitation of priests.
The Servants of
the Paraclete used to run a rehabilitation centre in Brownshill,
Gloucestershire, but it closed in 1998.
According to the lawsuit, the
Irish priest spent time there in 1975 after three separate sex-abuse
allegations were made against him.
He lived in Britain until 1981 but
was returned to ministry and later moved to the US, where fresh
allegations have surfaced.
The new firm is now
looking for British abuse survivors to come forward. But Justin
Levinson, a barrister who specialises in child abuse compensation
claims, questioned whether there would be enough future cases to sustain
a new practice.
"There are still new abuse cases cropping up, not in
their hundreds, but they are there," he said.
"Whether there are enough
to sustain a dedicated practice, however, I'd be doubtful."
Jeff Anderson's first case
In
1983, a man walked into Jeff Anderson's office saying he had been
abused by a priest from Minneapolis.
The case ended up moulding Anderson
into the Vatican's chief pursuer.
Convinced
that senior bishops had conspired to cover up the problem of paedophile
priests, he sued the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St Paul.
The bishops
came back with a reported $1m to settle the case out of court.
Anderson and his client refused the offer and took the case to court which of course drew the attention of the national media.
They
eventually won the case and Anderson was soon swamped with a barrage of
similar complaints as thousands of abuse victims came forward.
Anderson
is something of an enigma.
He flunked law school first time around and
operates on a no-win no-fee basis, making his money by taking between 25
and 40 per cent of settlement winnings.
In 2002 he estimated that his
victories totalled $60m but has since refused to update this figure.
SIC: TI/UK