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	Bridgeport Diocese Expected to Release Priest Abuse Documents Today By Dave Altimari The Hartford Courant December 1, 2009 http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-priest-abuse-1201.artdec01,0,1333927.story After eight years of legal battles that went to the nation's highest court, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport today is expected to release more than 12,600 pages of documents detailing sexual abuse complaints against several of its priests and how the church hierarchy handled those complaints. Superior Court Judge Barry Stevens set the Dec. 1 deadline to give the diocese time to review all of the documents and create a log of ones that it considers privileged information that should not be released. That's on top of the 15 documents in the 23 separate files that the state Supreme Court has ruled shall remain sealed because those 15 documents, including at least two depositions, were not submitted as legal documents. Bridgeport diocese spokesman Joseph McAleer said Monday that the church would comply with the judge's order. The diocese has started warning parishioners that the documents would be coming out, posting on its website a detailed outline of the case, including all of the stories that have been written about the case. "Contrary to the naysayers, this is very old news. Between 1993 and 2002, more than 200 media reports were published about these and other cases, including extensive Hartford Courant coverage in 2002 in an article that published, without permission, many of the sealed documents. The coverage included the names of the accused priests, critiques of the diocese's handling of the complaints, victims' accounts, and many other details," McAleer said. The diocese settled the lawsuits, some of which dated to the early 1990s, in March 2001, paying an undisclosed amount to 23 plaintiffs who alleged that they had been sexually abused by seven different priests. Cardinal Edward Egan was the bishop in charge in Bridgeport when many of the lawsuits were filed. He left to become the archbishop of New York shortly after the settlement was announced. The Courant obtained Egan's secret depositions taken in 1997 and 1999, as well as the deposition of his predecessor, Walter Curtis, who acknowledged that he kept "secret" files on abusive priests and that he destroyed sexual abuse complaints that he thought were outdated. Four newspapers, including The Courant, have been fighting since 2002 to get the files unsealed when it was learned that the files had not been destroyed by the court after the settlement. The state Supreme Court eventually ruled that the documents should be unsealed, but the diocese pressed its case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to take up the case earlier this fall.
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