Update Priests Accused As Pedophiles Want Their Day in Court to Plead Their Case, by Kay Ebeling, Examiner, March 5, 2009

Update: Priests Accused As Pedophiles Want Their Day in Court to Plead Their Case

By Kay Ebeling
Examiner
March 5, 2009

http://www.examiner.com/x-1960-LA-City-Buzz-Examiner~y2009m3d5-Update-Priests-accused-as-pedophiles-want-their-day-in-court

The attorney for the priests is pushing for more delays and he may have pushed himself into a corner as a judge ordered most of the documents still under seal on pedophile priests to be sent to a referee judge for review at a hearing in L.A Superior Court today.

Now the Judge is asking Steier, if his priests claim they are wrongly accused, they can come before her and plead their cases, or in front of another judge, but they can have their day in court. Steier insists some of the priests in the 510 civil cases settled in 2007 want to claim they are really decent guys.

Problem is, if they are not guilty, why did the archdiocese pay out millions of dollars to the victims of their crimes in 2007? Steier has a tough case to prove, but that is no problem, the archdiocese pays his fees and they never run out of money, so he can talk and talk and file motions and file motions.

I have to throw this post up faast

And get to my TV job, finish that

And tonight I will put up a full report on the hearing today. But for now almost all the documents in question are going to the referee judge for his review in camera, to decide if it does deny them privacy rights to release the files to the public or not. If the priests in question object, you can expect more and more and more hearings on release of some files, and Donald Steier will get become smoother and smoother. He has gained 20 "smooth" points since first time I saw him in an LA courtroom during pretrial hearings in 2007.

You have to hand it to Donald Steier, who represents an indeterminate number of Catholic priests whose names he will not tell you. Somebody with deep pockets is paying his fees. Today in court, four attorneys sat at the front table, like worker bees, while Donald Steier kicked back at the third table, leaning.

Steier is joking with me and the other survivors in court today who were raped by priests he represents.

He's smooth, he can say what he wants anytime, manipulate the court system just by standing their orating, which is really what he does. The entity that pays his bills has a bottomless briefcase of cash they probably deliver to him on Fridays. Donald Steier can file motion after motion after motion.

The judge is scowling at him.

Judge Elias is trying to Interrupt Steier and stop him, saying things like, "I don't find that disturbing," and, "It's a deal they made, exactly like the San Diego cases."

But then Donald Steier lifts his six foot something lanky legs and body out of his chair, towers over the courtroom, erects himself, and elocutes and elocutes.

He might have elocuted himself into a corner this time though. He keeps saying his priests have never had their day in court, because the 520 cases in Los Angeles were settled in Julyb 2007 without going to trial. The Catholic Church is playing this bait and switch game, first pushing for early settlement because they didn't want Cardinal Mahony to go on the stand, and now they're saying because there was no trial, the priests should not be able to have their names besmirched in public, with the release of files now in the archdiocese's possession that document the crimes of the priests and how they were handled by heierarchy.

So the judge and the plaintiffs all agreed that the priests should come to court, hold a hearing, and defend their honor, if that is necessary, and Donald Steier had to agree to it, because that was the end of his own logic.

So there may be hearings sometime in the future for accused pedophile priests from Clergy Cases 2007 to defend themselves in a public courtroom.

Stay tuned, it may be years, but it could happen.

Full report on the hearing today this evening. I'll see what the L.A. Times writes and then fill in the blanks. . .

See post directly after this about a potential class action forming to sue the Vatican.