SAN DIEGO (CA)
Union-Tribune
By Onell R. Soto
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 9, 2005
A federal judge in San Diego said yesterday he was skeptical that overturning a state law that allowed victims of sexual abuse to sue the Roman Catholic Church is the right thing to do.
"That's an awful broad stroke of the pen," Judge William Q. Hayes said at the end of a three-hour hearing in which church officials asked him to do just that.
The church officials said the accusations were difficult to fight because they date to the 1950s.
About 140 people have sued the church under a 2002 state law that made it possible for them to file decades-old claims. Those cases, and hundreds of others from Southern California, are in mediation in Los Angeles. No trials have been scheduled.
Hayes didn't make a decision on the validity of the law yesterday, or say when he was likely to, but said he wasn't inclined to throw out the cases "without knowing the facts, without knowing how old they are."