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	Diocese Suits Really Punish Parishioners, Not Perpetrators By Michael P. Kelly The News Journal November 22, 2009 http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20091122/OPINION08/911220302/1004/OPINION Most of my colleagues wondered why I so vocally opposed Senate Bill 29, which eliminated the statute of limitations for civil (read, "money") lawsuits for childhood sex abuse cases. Instead of extending the statute of limitations for those who could prove a legitimate excuse for an extension (e.g. traumatic memory loss ), our legislature abolished the time limit for all new cases and, if that were not revolutionary enough, created a two-year window to bring claims that arose since the beginning of time. No other state has come close to following this path. While it should have been evident that no organization could possibly survive, let alone insure against, such a limitless onslaught of litigation, many rightfully asked the question: "What could be wrong with compensating victims of sexual abuse, and holding pedophiles to account?" Put simply, the answer is the unmitigated disaster that has befallen Delaware's Catholic community over the last two years. Start with the elementary distinction between civil and criminal law. S.B. 29 has not and will never put a pedophile in jail. The General Assembly cannot turn back the clock to criminally punish many notorious molesters who escaped the time limit for criminal prosecution. Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution ("no ex post facto law") blocks any such effort. The perpetrators will live their remaining years (if in fact they are still alive) in nursing homes, before they are called home to face the judgment of a just God. No law will change that. Neither will the perpetrators of these crimes pay any money. Many are dead. The rest are members of the clergy, most of whom took a vow of poverty and have no assets. Little or none of the millions of dollars sought by the victims will be paid by molesters. So, the only real question before the General Assembly in considering S.B. 29 was, "Should we upend well-settled, crystal-clear law to take away the accumulated charitable donations of generations of Delawareans from their intended purpose (that is, the church), and transfer those donations to victims of childhood sexual abuse and their lawyers?" The victims and their lawyers indisputably are after those charitable donations. They are not suing just for an apology, or for the cost of counseling, or for a change in church leadership; they are suing for millions of dollars. A third or more of those millions will go directly into the lawyers' pockets. Should the General Assembly have changed the law to enable that transfer of wealth? When this law was debated, the first response to that argument was, "How bad can it be?" Contrary to the stated expectation of the General Assembly, the answer turned out to be "really, really bad." S.B. 29 opened the floodgates of litigation, as some of us knew and warned it would. Civil lawsuits alleging sexual abuse leapt from a handful in the last 30 years to 175 in the two years since S.B. 29 was passed. The second basic argument in favor of S.B. 29 was, "Why have a statute of limitations at all; why should a wrongdoer ever get off the hook?" Again, some of us knew and warned of the answer: Memories fade; witnesses die; proof becomes harder to muster, leading to jury decisions based more on emotional reaction and less on evidence. How exactly is the Diocese of Wilmington supposed to defend against an allegation that a priest molested an altar boy in 1950, when the priest and his accuser were the only two people in the room when the reprehensible alleged act took place, and the alleged offender priest died 40 years ago? Statutes of limitations exist to provide a civil defendant a fair opportunity to defend itself. The next argument is that, "Sexual molestation is really bad." Of course it is. It is depraved, disgusting and unforgivable. So are torture killing and cannibalism. Yet under Delaware law, a sadistic mass murderer or a cannibal cannot be sued for monetary damages more than two years after the date of his crime. Therefore, taking molestation out of the rubric of Delaware law was, at best, illogical. That is especially true given that the target defendants are organizations. Corporations do not molest -- people do. But corporations live longer and have deeper pockets. S.B. 29 is also flawed because it is fundamentally unfair, since it does not treat like actors the same way. State Rep. Greg Lavelle offered an amendment to S.B. 29 to have it apply to all molestation, i.e. bad acts that occur (and by all accounts still occur) in state institutions such as the notorious Delaware Psychiatric Center. His proposal died swiftly, leaving us to assume that the General Assembly intended to target only Catholic institutions, while the problems in state agencies remain unredressed. Who should care? If you've ever put a dollar in the donation box in the hope of helping someone in need, feeding someone hungry, or providing solace to someone in despair, then you should. The donations that all of us Delaware Catholics offered up to the service of the Lord will shortly be taken away from His work, to be coldly distributed piecemeal in a bankruptcy court. Even if you are not a Delaware Catholic, all residents of the Delmarva peninsula will be disadvantanged as a weakened diocese and targeted parishes will inevitably be less able to provide the needed social services that benefit all of us. It won't just be the loss of buildings that will need to be sold to satisfy these claims, but also the shaken support of lay people/donors who are the lifeblood of institutions that stabilize neighborhoods and provide a safety net to those most in need, regardless of faith. S.B. 29 was a mistake. It was enacted on a rush to jump on a "hot-button" issue before considering practical results, centuries of legal precedent and fundamental fairness to the accused. The results speak for themselves.
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