CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly
by Gustavo Arellano
Now that the Orange diocese sex-abuse scandal is officially settled—a Dec. 6 conference disclosed the total at a record-breaking $100 million—pundits will speak of winners and losers. You’ll hear of Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown, the church’s reputation, NAMBLA. But here are five winners and five losers that won’t get as much coverage:
THE WINNERS
Manly & McGuire: The Costa Mesa-based law firm primarily deals with real-estate law but represented 30 of the 87 cases against the Orange diocese. The tenacity of its three lead employees—attorneys John Manly (nicknamed "Mad Dog" Manly by church lawyers), Ryan DiMaria and monk-turned-researcher Patrick Wall—ensured that the settlement included the public release of priest-personnel files victims claim will show church complicity in their molestations. Thanks to their bulldog reputation, Manly, DiMaria and Wall are pursuing similar cases across the country. Next giant to slay: the Los Angeles Archdiocese.
Judge Jim Gray: In 2001, Gray ordered the Orange and Los Angeles dioceses to pay DiMaria $5.2 million for abuse he alleged at the hands of Michael Harris, the former principal of Mater Dei and Santa Margarita high schools. At the time, it was the largest single-plaintiff, pretrial settlement in the history of the Catholic Church. More significantly, Gray forced Brown to disclose psychological records that diagnosed Harris with a sexual attraction to young boys. DiMaria vs. Harris came before the Boston archdiocese sex scandal and established a precedent for every priestly molestation case since.