As Church Attorney Spoke I Wrote in My Notes Not True Lies Eloquent Lies, Kay Ebeling, Examiner, March 6, 2009

As Church Attorney Spoke, I Wrote in My Notes, Not True Lies Eloquent Lies

By Kay Ebeling
Examiner
March 6, 2009

http://www.examiner.com/x-1960-LA-City-Buzz-Examiner~y2009m3d5-An-eloquent-set-of-mistruths-from-mouth-of-church-attorney-at-LA-document-release-hearing-Thursday

Cardinal Mahony at a rare public appearance

"The documents weren’t public because they weren’t introduced at trial,” is one of many proclamations of Donald Steier, attorney for all the Catholic priests who were accused in the L.A. Clergy Cases which lobbed through the civil court system in 2007. In those cases 510 plaintiffs who were raped as children by Catholic priests around Los Angeles shared, along with the attorneys, a settlement of $660 million, in an agreement knocked out the night before the first jury trial was to begin. The plaintiffs were ready to go to trial, it was the Cardinal Roger Mahony's attorneys who stopped things the night before trial.

Now the church tries to use the lack of a trial as an argument to deny a major part of the settlements, the release of priest personnel files and other documents that likely show collusion and other crimes at a heirarchy level in the L.A. Catholic Archdiocese.

To me the amount of the settlement and the readiness of the Church to pay the settlements in July 2007 shows the lawsuits were telling the truth. The Archdiocese revealed the truth in the allegations against the priests and their bosses, the bishops and cardinals, by paying out the $660 million settlement.

"Still Donald Steier files motion after motion, speaks over and over at more and more hearings about how unfair this whole process has been to the perpetrator priests."

In Los Angeles this week, plaintiffs got over what was likely the last hump in the saga of getting the files released as promised as part of the settlement. It was a deal made between attorneys and judges behind closed doors, like a plea bargain, the way of justice in the USA today. The details were worked out in the hours before the July 16, 2007, settlement hearing.

Pic is Cardinal Mahony's eyes

I have notes from that hearing, I was there in the front row, I saw Cardinal Mahony’s spangly 12 inch diamond jangled cross that dangles in front of his converse bony chest. He wore the necklace to the settlement hearing to accessorize a breezy black pantsuit.

A lot of attention in court this week was spent discussing what was said at that hearing July 16th, so after I write these posts about the hearing, and finish my other job tomorrow, I’ll go find that file and see what they're talking about.

"As eloquent as he is, as Donald Steier spoke I kept putting in my notes, “not true” “a lie” “I know this is not true.” Still he was allowed to speak on. For example "

STEIER: These documents weren’t public because they weren’t introduced at trial, they were part of discovery. Discovery exchanges are normally not public until introduced into evidence.”

“NOT TRUE” shows up in my notes here, because since 2007, I have been looking at evidence that was brought out in discovery in Room 106 of the Superior Court Building on Hill Street. The testimonies at depositions, the exhibits, or at least a list of the exhibits, are often in the public documents. So what is Steier saying here?

Judge Emilie Elias said,: “Well it’s a deal they made.“ with a tone in her voice, I thought, like, “Hey, man, get over it.” But I live in the ghetto, I could be wrong. . . .

In the hearing this morning, Donald Steier, defense attorney for accused predator priests all over southern California, said: There’s no word for what to do in a case like we're in, where the cases were dismissed,” and Steier displayed something I have said for a while now, concerning these clergy cases.

Pic is Cardinal Mahony's mouth

There is no law currently written to handle pedophile priest rape cases, because the crimes are so heinous legislators never conceived of them before. So it will take new law, creative lawyering, to resolve these issues.

“It’s never happened this way before,” Steier pronounced. “We can’t just include it in the settlement agreement, the cases are long since dismissed.”

Here is more from the hearing Thursday March 5th in Dept 308 Los Angeles Superior Court, the big silver tall building at the corner of 6th Street and Commonwealth.,

STEIER: Now, I could finish or go on.

JUDGE: Just finish-

STEIER: Okay well my clients are accused as perpetrators, molesters. A category of terrible people. That's a foundation they need to prove to set my clients apart from everybody else. Your court clerk wouldn’t have to turn over his personnel files.

(Steier is trying to say here that these priests, the accusations against whom were so credible they got through the same bottomless wallet worth of determination to dismiss, through the years of the L.A. lawsuits, from 2003 to 2007 and yet the Los Angeles Archdiocese, in the end, paid out $660 million dollars because of these priests, that these priests are all innocent, wrongly accused just normal nice guys?

Mr. Steier, Don’t you think a $660 million dollar settlement that concerns priests makes them more likely to be guilty of accusations against them than the court clerk who is just sitting there?

Don't blame me for how nasty is this cartoon, I found it on Google, just a sample of what is out there.

(I mean the fact there was a settlement proves that the allegations against these priests were VERY credible, they SURVIVED the church financed scrutiny and attack for years.)

The priests in question ARE perpetrator priests.

The hearing continued, but then all of a sudden the tone changed. They started talking about having the accused priests come in and testify in front of the public and in front of the judge.

"I got real excited and wrote in my notes, heck yes I want to see these guys come in and go on trial. Let's go..."

Continued next post, probably in the afternoon as I have to work my other job tomorrow morning.

Goodnight, folks