BishopAccountability.org
	WWJS? (Who) Would Jesus Sue? By Kia Franklin TortDeform July 30, 2007 http://www.tortdeform.com/archives/2007/07/wwjs_who_would_jesus_sue_1.html Los Angeles (CA) — This L.A. Times article discusses the massive lawsuit against the L.A. Roman Catholic Church for the sexual abuse that has gone on for decades without much response from the church, despite countless reports of child molestation and sexual assault. An injury like this one is so personal, lasting, and sensitive that no court can ever fully make a victim whole. But one thing that taking their injuries to court has done for these particular victims is it has given them an opportunity to sit down and speak with the man who was charged with protecting the church and with listening to parishoners concerns. As settlement agreement details get ironed out, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who has headed the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles since 1985, has invited plaintiffs to sit down and talk with him about what happened. At least two victims took that opportunity to ask the Cardinal whether he thought he handled their reports of abuse as Jesus would have—in other words, whether he believed he fulfilled his obligation to the church. This is essentially the same as the fiduciary duty concept—the idea that if you're charged with a special duty to protect but fail in that duty and directly cause another person's harm, then you are legally responsible for that harm. The response among other victims to the opportunity to sit with the Cardinal has been varied. Some have jumped at the opportunity to describe their pain and the church's role in allowing the pain to continue; others simply seek an apology; still others refrain from speaking with the Cardinal for fear that it will do them further harm, or because they believe that this is merely an attempt at reputation-recovery. Those who did take up the offer reported the gamut of experiences. Some felt that the Cardinal was not compassionate enough, according to the article; others experienced true reconciliation; still others enjoyed the opportunity to spell out the extent and depth of their trauma to the person who could have disciplined the perpetrator and prevented the abuse from continuing. What these varied stories show is the truly personal nature of injury, and this calls to light one of the big challenges of addressing social and personal harms through the court system. How do you really place a normative value on pain, how do you assess damages and when are economic damages simply inadequate for making the victim whole? These are questions we continue to grapple with, but I do believe that without a public forum in which to address these questions, the most powerful wrongdoers in society would evade responsibility time and again. So while the court system can not force full healing from harms like this, it can help facilitate some of the processes that lead to healing. The court system can also be the last resort but most effective means for compelling responsible parties to—well, take responsibility. Especially in the context of sexual abuse, where the subject is so taboo and all parties involved so vulnerable to reputational and other harms, it is important that our society has a force that compels this confrontation and protects victims from the silence of shame. It's funny that tort "reformers" always speak of personal responsibility in lawsuits as an ethic that is lacking among plaintiffs, but they often neglect to acknowledge (or perhaps they just don't think about) the importance of preventing the wrongdoer from escaping responsibility. This lawsuit and the press it has generated have probably played more than a minimal role in providing the formerly-abused plaintiffs the opportunity to just sit and talk with their Cardinal. Lawsuits often serve as a catalyst for creative solutions to disputes and, importantly, as a reminder that there are consequences for wrongdoing and that the civil justice system is there to help ensure that those consequences are meted out.
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