BishopAccountability.org
	Bridgeport Diocese Appeals Release of Priest Sex Abuse Documents By Dave Altimari Hartford Courant June 13, 2009 http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-priest-records-0613.artjun13,0,1619128.story The Diocese of Bridgeport filed a motion Friday to have the full Supreme Court rehear its appeal to keep more than 12,000 pages of court records involving lawsuits against its priests sealed. The church has asked that the seven-member state court hear arguments on the case, meaning for now that the documents will remain sealed. "There are several issues that have never been addressed before in Connecticut courts and the full court should hear them," said Ralph W. Johnson III, the attorney for the church. "There were several facts that were laid out that were not addressed by the majority opinion. A reasonable person would come to a different conclusion and we think that the full court should reconsider the case," Johnson said. Last month, a five-member panel ruled 4-1 that the court documents involving 23 lawsuits against seven priests from the diocese should be unsealed. The documents were scheduled to become public in a matter of weeks but now will remain sealed until the court rules on the diocese's new motion. It is unclear how long it will take the justices to decide whether to rehear the case. "Between this yearslong fight for secrecy and his silly new litigation to exempt the church from lobbying laws, Bishop Lori is spending hundreds of thousands of donated dollars on defense lawyers. Generous Connecticut Catholics don't deserve to have their children endangered and their contributions squandered," said Barbara Dorris of the national chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. The diocese's decision to seek a full panel marks the latest legal maneuver in a battle that has been continuing for more than seven years. The diocese's legal options were limited. Other than seeking a full panel, it also could have tried an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that would not automatically keep the files sealed and there is only a slight chance that the nation's highest court would take the case. The diocese is trying to keep closed more than 12,600 pages of depositions, exhibits and legal arguments involving 23 lawsuits against seven priests from the Bridgeport diocese. The lawsuits were settled by the church for undisclosed amounts with the agreement that the settlements and the documents would remained sealed forever. Several newspapers, including The Courant, filed a lawsuit to have the documents unsealed. Among the court documents are three depositions by then-Bishop Edward Egan, who was in charge of the Bridgeport diocese when most of the lawsuits against priests under his control were filed and adjudicated. Egan recently retired as the archbishop of New York. Stories detailing how Egan and other officials in Bridgeport ignored accusations or protected abusive priests were published in The Courant in 2002. The stories were based on some of the secret court documents that the paper obtained on its own. The case has gone to the state Supreme Court twice since 2002. The first time came after Judge Robert F. McWeeny at Superior Court in Waterbury granted four newspapers — The Courant, The Boston Globe, The New York Times and The Washington Post — the right to intervene in the closed cases and seek the documents. The Bridgeport Roman Catholic Diocesan Corp. appealed that decision, but lost as the court remanded the case to the court in Waterbury, where Judge Jon C. Alander ruled in 2006 that the files should be made public. Alander ruled that he did not find compelling the argument by the diocese that the files should remain sealed out of concern for ensuring a fair trial, if one became necessary. The diocese argued that this was a legitimate concern because two sex abuse lawsuits are pending and future claims could be brought. But Alander ruled the "right of access to those documents is particularly strong in these cases due to the extraordinary public interest in knowing whether minors in Connecticut were sexually abused by priests employed by the Diocese and whether the Diocese was responsible for perpetuating that abuse." The diocese appealed that ruling, sending the case back to the state Supreme Court for the second time. In its second appeal, the diocese argued that Alander should have recused himself from the case because he was serving at that time on a judicial committee reviewing public access to court documents along with a reporter from The Courant, one of the plaintiffs in the case. In its latest motion for reconsideration, the diocese argued that the majority did not address all of the facts surrounding Alander's conflict. The church argued that Alander and The Courant reporter were in effect "teammates" on a committee deciding what Connecticut law should be in regard to public records. That committee produced a final report that "contained legal analysis of the very issues in dispute in these 23 cases and reached conclusions beneficial to the newspapers' positions in the cases." The court ruled that just because Alander was a member of the task force did not mean that he couldn't be fair and impartial. "There is no reason to suggest that a judge who is exposed to information concerning potential future changes to the law while he is presiding over a case that implicates existing law in that area compromises his ability to be impartial," Justice Joette Katz wrote. In his dissenting opinion, Justice William J. Sullivan wrote that any "person of ordinary intelligence and experience" could question Alander's impartiality. "Judge Alander served as the chairman of the very committee that was charged with making the recommendations for these new policies and procedures, and he served on the committee with a representative of one of the intervenors in the case," Sullivan wrote.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.