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	Full Statement of the Diocese of Bridgeport United Press International May 22, 2009 http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-diocese-bridgeport-statement,0,4648966.story We are deeply disappointed that the Connecticut Supreme Court has failed to uphold the Diocese's right to a fair adjudication of its claim by an impartial judge, Judge Jon Alander ? a right that is fundamental to any legal proceeding. Lost in today's decision is the fact that, during the litigation claims of the 1990's, the victims' and their attorneys had access to the records in question under seal. In 2001, the claims were settled, and the court records, including documents under seal, were set to follow the standard procedure for all claims settled before trial and be destroyed. Background Well after the legal time limit to challenge the initial sealing of documents, the secular press intervened, demanding access to the court files, including the sealed records. In a decision replete with anti-Catholic Church rhetoric, the trial judge actually invented an entirely new procedure to accommodate this after-the-fact request from the press. Very appropriately, in our view, the Appellate Court of Connecticut overturned that trial decision. However, the Connecticut Supreme Court reversed and remanded to a new trial judge. Judge Alander Coincidentally, that judge, Judge Alander, was at that very time chairing a Judicial Committee reviewing the issue of press access to court records whose stated purpose was to provide more accessibility to court records and proceedings. Creating a further conflict, one of the members of this committee who was collaborating with Judge Alander was a reporter from the Hartford Courant, who was a party in the case against the Diocese. As Justice Sullivan notes in his dissenting opinion, "A person of ordinary intelligence and experience would have reason to question Judge Alander's impartiality in the present case?" The dissent also noted that two other judges, initially appointed to the same Committee, stepped down from the committee because they had before them cases involving similar issues of sealed documents and public access. Motion Denied In response to these obvious conflicts, the Diocese presented a motion requesting Judge Alander recuse himself in this matter, but that motion was denied by the Judge himself. It was not surprising, then, that Judge Alander ruled against the Diocese's claim to the privacy of its internal Church records. The Diocese then appealed that decision to the State Supreme Court. Media Self-Interest The majority rationale for the presumptive public access to judicial documents is to "provide the public with a more complete understanding of the judicial system and a better perception of its fairness." However, as Justice William Sullivan says in his dissent, the Hartford Courant and New York Times had "?reported extensively on the underlying cases from the time that the first action was brought in early January 1993 through the date that they were settled, that they knew about the sealing orders, and they never sought to intervene in the cases for the purpose of challenging the sealing orders while the cases were active ?" "This belies any suggestion that the intervenors are seeking access to the sealed files in order to provide a more complete understanding of the judicial process," Justice Sullivan concludes. Extraordinary Safeguards Sadly, the history of this case has been about access by the secular media to internal Church documents of cases more than 30 years ago to suggest, unfairly, that nothing has changed. This is despite the extraordinary measures the Catholic Church has undertaken over the past several years to treat victims with great compassion and dignity, and to put in safeguards and educational programs to ensure that such a tragedy will not happen again. Deep Concerns Remain From the anti-church rhetoric of the first trial judge who proceeded to "invent" an entirely new procedure to accommodate the press, to the lack of an impartial trial judge to reconsider the case on remand from the Connecticut Supreme Court, the history of this case raises issues that should be of concern to all. We are, therefore, currently reviewing our options in response to this decision.
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