FOR the archdiocese of Milwaukee, the past looms large.
Its
main office is the Cousins Centre, named after William Cousins,
archbishop from 1959 to 1977.
The cathedral’s pastoral office is the
Weakland Centre, after Rembert Weakland, archbishop from 1977 to 2002.
Victims allege that both men knew that certain priests had a history of
molesting boys, yet failed to act or simply transferred the priests
elsewhere.
Last month the past caught up with the present: the
archdiocese, besieged by lawsuits, filed for bankruptcy.
The creditors’
committee was due to hold its first meeting on February 11th.
Since 2002, when scandal erupted in Boston, more and more victims have sued the Roman Catholic church.
As the number of suits has risen, so too has the number of dioceses
seeking the protection of bankruptcy.
Portland was the first diocese to
file, in 2004; Milwaukee is the eighth.
Each case is different.
All are
difficult.
Milwaukee has a particularly tortured history.
It has been rife with
scandal—a Father Lawrence Murphy was alleged to have abused some 200
deaf students, for example, and a convicted priest was sent to work with
children in California. Yet civil suits have only recently proved
successful.
Plaintiffs in other states have charged the church with
negligent supervision of priests, but this argument found little
traction in Wisconsin’s courts. Victims made progress, at last, in 2007.
The archdiocese, plaintiffs claimed, had committed fraud in the 1970s
and 1980s by misrepresenting such priests to future victims. The state
Supreme Court let that claim stand.
A wave of lawsuits followed and, on January 4th, the archdiocese
filed for bankruptcy.
The filing puts all the suits on hold.
Jeff
Anderson, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, argues that the bankruptcy was timed
to avoid an embarrassing trial.
“It is part of a pattern,” says Mr
Anderson, who has brought hundreds of suits against various bits of the
church, including one against the Vatican.
The archdiocese says this is
nonsense.
Bankruptcy will simply allow it to deal with creditors
equitably and settle claims more quickly than in a trial.
But the bankruptcy will hardly be speedy.
All bankruptcies are
complex, but those for a church are much more so, explains Jonathan
Lipson, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Financial statements filed in the bankruptcy court on February 7th
presage fights to come.
The archdiocese presented $40.7m in assets,
compared with $98.4m in its financial report last year.
The discrepancy,
the archdiocese says, is because certain assets are held in restricted
trusts, largely for the care of cemeteries.
Plaintiffs may view this
differently.
Pension liabilities present another complication for the
bankruptcy judge, as religious groups are exempt from many federal
pension rules. Yet the biggest fight may well be over parishes and
schools.
These are separately incorporated, the archdiocese contends, so
their assets are protected.
But the plaintiffs may argue otherwise—or
simply sue the parishes themselves.
All this may drag on for years.
But Peter Isely, of the Survivors
Network of those Abused by Priests, remains hopeful. Bankruptcy, he
says, will encourage victims to come forward and may eventually force
the truth from the archdiocese.
In Delaware, where a diocese filed for
bankruptcy in 2009, a recent settlement included the release of internal
church documents.
Mr Isely repeats the refrain of many advocates for
those who were abused.
“Every victim”, he insists, “has a right to know
what bishops knew, when they knew it and what they did about it.”