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	A Taste of What's Ahead in Church Trial What Did Diocese Know? By Frank Mickadeit Orange County Register September 18, 2007 http://www.ocregister.com/column/nielsen-diocese-doe-1847297-andrade Something tells me the Diocese of Orange is going to settle this lawsuit before we get to trial on Oct. 9. Too much bleeding already, and with the judge now indicating it could drag on through Christmas, I don't see Bishop Tod Brown having the stomach for it. Also, it's not like there's any question former Mater Dei assistant basketball coach Jeff Andrade carried on a two-year affair with the plaintiff, who was 15 when it started. This is just a matter of how much culpability the church has here and what it's willing to pay the woman to go away. Fairly key to how quickly the Diocese caves, I'm guessing, is a major pretrial ruling Judge Gail Andler will be asked to make within the next few days. Attorneys for the victim, Jane C. R. Doe, will ask Andler to allow the jury to award punitive damages in addition to actual damages. The psychological therapy the now 26-year-old woman will undergo for the rest of her life would amount to substantial actual damages on its own – "in the millions," her attorney, Venus Soltan, told me. But if the jury finds the Diocese responsible and can levy punitive damages – well, the sky's the limit. The Diocese can be exposed to punitive damages if Andler determines the allegations involve "conscious disregard for the safety of a child" on the church's part. Soltan believes they do, and in court last week she outlined a few reasons why. (And this is just the kind of garbage the Diocese doesn't want to have to keep reading in the papers over the course of months of trial.) Soltan's main arguments on the culpability issue: •The Diocese knew it had 30 sex abusers in its employ between 1995-97, the period Doe and Andrade were having sex, including seven at Mater Dei. •A teacher intercepted a note that indicated Doe and Andrade were in a relationship. The note went up to Diocesan authorities, who did not report it to police or the girl's parents. •Mater Dei administrators saw Andrade and Doe together at a hotel in Las Vegas, where Mater Dei was playing in a basketball tournament. Doe had no connection to the basketball team and had no reason to be in the hotel. Yet, nothing was reported. •Andrade was seen in the Mater Dei parking lot screaming at Doe that she was a "bitch," a "whore" and a "slut," and yet nothing was reported. Diocesan attorney Peter Callahan says Soltan has misrepresented the facts to make the Diocese appear it knew more than it did. Also, "a number of facts" about the Vegas basketball trip are untrue, he said. Furthermore, the Diocese has shown good faith and desire to react appropriately to reports of abuse by settling 90 earlier cases for $100 million. We'll know more when we see a formal motion and response. Elsewhere on the molestation front, former GOP staffer Jeffery Nielsen has been charged with 10 more counts. Already facing retrial on six felony charges that he molested a Westminster High School boy in 2003, Nielsen faces new allegations that he had sex with a then-13-year-old boy who was visiting him in 1994. Nielsen was in his 20s and a D.C. staffer to Dana Rohrabacher when he met the boy, who visited him at Nielsen's parents' home in Fountain Valley. R. Scott Moxley over at the O.C. Weekly somehow came up with a photo purported to be of Nielsen and this kid kissing in someone's kitchen and published it last spring. Although the charges are 13 years old, the D.A. can file them because the allegations were only reported to law enforcement within the last year. But it gets even worse for Nielsen. The Redondo Beach city prosecutor's office told me yesterday it is deciding whether to press charges against Nielsen for allegedly making threatening phone calls regarding the mother of his most recent boyfriend. The accuser, who filed a police report Sept. 9 in the city where she lives, says Nielsen was angry that she talked to me about her suspicion that he was having sex with her son when he was a minor. That thread is also being explored by our own D.A. This means that when all is said and done, Nielsen could be looking at trials dealing with three different young men. I called Nielsen's lawyer, Paul Meyer, late in the day yesterday and he hadn't gotten back to me by deadline. If he does call back, I'll be glad to print his comments. But he hasn't been saying much about this lately. Contact the writer: Mickadeit writes Mon.-Fri. Contact him at 714-796-4994 or fmickadeit@ocregister.com
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