NEW YORK
Albany Times Union
First published: Saturday, February 25, 2006
In 14 pages of patient, almost exhaustive, legal detail, the highest court in New York explained the other day why more than three dozen people who say they were victims of sexually abusive Roman Catholic priests can't go to court to seek the appropriate damages. Simply stated, they waited too long.
One of the complainants, a former student at a parochial school in Utica, says he was abused from 1963 to 1970. The others, 42 people in all, recounted abuses that they said were inflicted upon them by 13 different priests in the Brooklyn diocese between 1960 and 1985.
That makes it too late to seek justice for what has all the appearances of what the Court of Appeals calls the deplorable acts of countless priests. Injuries are compounded by a law that requires suits to be filed within three years of an alleged incident or before the person suing turns 21, whichever is later. That's too rigid and too brief.