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	Our View - Sunday Colorado Springs Gazette February 24, 2008 http://www.gazette.com/opinion/church_33494___article.html/bill_children.html 'Save the children' Bill seeks to sink churches Save the children. We must save them from the Catholic Church and its predatory pedophile priests. If we care about kids, we'll support House Bill 1011. That's what the bill's sponsor, state Rep. Gwyn Green, D-Golden, wants us to believe. The law would be a gift to predatory plaintiff's lawyers who are getting rich by emptying the coffers of the Catholic Church. The law would open a two-year window in which plaintiffs could sue private organizations for allegations of past sexual misdeeds of their employees. It would hold private organizations (read: the Catholic Church) accountable for the actions of the accused "even though the perpetrator of the offense is deceased or incapacitated." A dead priest is completely incapable of putting on a defense. He's equally useless for paying damages a judge or jury might award. Under the proposed law, therefore, those who failed to properly manage long-dead allegedly predatory priests would be held liable. Of course, most who had anything to do with the accused dead priests are likewise dead or long gone from the church, meaning awards will be paid by people who had never heard of the defendants, and in some cases weren't born yet when the abuse supposedly occurred. Never in the history of American jurisprudence has legislation been crafted with such disregard for evidence, due process or fairness. The law seeks to eliminate statutes of limitations — which exist to prevent lawsuits involving evidence and memories so old they're meaningless. It seeks to allow judgments against dead people, holding responsible a generation that had no control over the actions of the accused. The Colorado bill is a near clone of a California law that facilitated lawyers in dredging up 1,034 old claims, all but 24 involving the Catholic Church. The claims have resulted in more than $1 billion in settlements, bankrupting one diocese. Hundreds of cases have yet to be resolved. Ten claims involved dead priests who are accused of abusing children in the 1930s — when Herbert Hoover was president. "It's a plaintiff lawyer's dream. An allegation alone is basically all you need," said Martin Nussbaum, a Colorado Springs lawyer who represents churches. Why don't plaintiff's lawyers stick to recent cases? Because they would be hard to find, and would involve the need for evidence. The church was once attractive to sexual predators for the same reason youth organizations and schools are: it provided access to children. Today, however, the church is unmatched in its zero-tolerance crusade against sexual assault. It fingerprints, investigates, and psychoanalyzes all who work with kids. It established a massive bureaucracy in Washington for the sole purpose of protecting youth from sexual abuse. At this moment, however, public schools children remain in grave danger. Just as the church attracted abusers, public schools continue attracting them. As reported in an Associated Press series, sexual abuse in public school is common and widespread, with teachers and administrators looking the other way. Since January of 2006, 46 public school employees in Colorado alone have been charged with sex abuse crimes against children. The AP investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five years nationwide that ranged "from bizarre to sadistic." Though sexual abuse appears far more widespread in public schools than it was in the church, only a handful of newspapers — including The Gazette — ran the AP series. By contrast, one survey found that in the year following allegations of old sex abuse cases in the Archdiocese of Boston, the country's newspapers averaged a new story every nine minutes about the scandal. In one year alone, newspapers ran more than 21,000 separate stories about sexual abuse in the church. A priest with the altar boy is much racier than, say, a band teacher with a student. Understandably, the exaggerated nature of the crisis created an environment for hysterical reactions such as Green's Draconian bill. Critics of Green's soak-the-church bill have asked why, if she's so concerned about saving the children, she isn't concerned about those facing a current threat in public schools. In response to that uncomfortable inquiry, Green proposed a bill that would waive the sovereign immunity that protects public schools from liability when a pervert teacher rapes kids. But the school bill is laughable. While the other bill allows people to sue for pre-World War II allegations involving dead defendants, the other bill does nothing to extend time limits. Therefore, a school is free and clear if it isn't given legal notice within 180 days of a child's rape. It's Green's desire that victims sue for millions today if a priest allegedly raped them in the 1930s. Yet, any child raped in public school last spring — by an employee who's alive and well to perpetrate again — may have no civil recourse today. The school's liability would not exceed $150,000, and it would be liable only if administrators failed to perform a criminal background check on the perpetrator in jurisdictions where background checks are required. Support for Green's proposals means this: Private organizations should be denied the most fundamental constraints that have traditionally defined our justice system, so they can be sued for every dime — for the sake of the children. And this: Government organizations should carry on without fear of liability should an employee rape kids. Great job saving our present day youth from long-dead priests, Rep. Green! Thank the heavens for heroes like you.
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