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	Priest Document Release a Daunting Task By Christian Nolan Connecticut Law Tribune December 7, 2009 http://www.ctlawtribune.com/getarticle.aspx?ID=35729 CONNECTICUT -- Can you imagine someone from the Judicial Branch standing over a photocopier making copies of 12,000 pages of documents? No, state officials couldn't either. So when faced with the daunting task of releasing court records pertaining to 23 lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by priests, they didn't release even one piece of paper. Instead, they turned to technology. First, the documents were uploaded to the Internet, where they were available for a short time last week at a URL that could be obtained only by media representatives who contacted Judicial Branch officials. And then they were made into CD-ROMs. Those are for sale now at the state courthouse in Waterbury for $6. There were 40 copies of the CD-ROM available, and six copies had been sold as of late last week. Last week's document release was the culmination of years of litigation involving the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, people who claimed that they had been molested by priests, and media representatives who wanted copies of court documents. The documents had been sealed since the cases were settled in 2001. Despite pressure from media organizations, the diocese strenuously fought to keep them secret. But after both the state and U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the diocese in recent months, a Waterbury judge ordered a Dec. 1 release date. But the sheer number of documents made that no easy task. State officials first pondered putting the documents in an e-mail file, but figured their computers, as well as those of potential recipients, would not be able to handle such a mammoth file. Judicial Branch spokeswoman Rhonda Stearley-Hebert said that's when the thinking turned toward CD-ROMs. The problem was, making the disks would take some time, and media organizations wanted the information quickly. Hence, the idea for the available-by-request Internet link. "Within a relatively short period of time we were able to provide links to the documents," said Stearley-Hebert. "People used that and that gave us the time to develop the disk." The discs were made from a CD-ROM provided by the diocese. In the end, "I think everybody was pleased on how it worked out," Stearley-Hebert said. "It sure beat the clerk's office making copies.… We have a great staff in Waterbury but that would've been a tough one." The electronic approach didn't just save everyone time. It saved money as well. Some reporters recalled that years ago there were complaints when the Judicial Branch charged a dollar a page for documents in a major case. Hard To Read? The Diocese of Bridgeport delivered its own CD-ROMs directly to lawyers for various publications, including the Hartford Courant, New York Times and Boston Globe, which had gone to court to force the documents' release. It's that case, Rosado v. Bridgeport Roman Catholic Diocesan Corp., that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Diocese spokesman Joseph McAleer said he would take a "pass" on an interview to discuss the logistics of the document release. Ralph W. Johnson III, a Halloran and Sage attorney who represents the diocese, also wouldn't discuss the decision to go with a CD-ROM. He would say only that the Supreme Court's order requiring document release was "complied with." For those interested in the priest lawsuits, gaining access to the documents was one thing. Making sense of them was another. At least one lawyer with a connection to the case complained about how non-user friendly the diocese CD-ROM was. Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a Massachusetts-based non-profit group that pushes for the release of documents in priest abuse cases, made the same point. He said the thousands of pages of documents were numbered, but there were few clues as to what type of court record each page came from. After downloading all of it, he spent last Tuesday night reprocessing the files so he could search certain names or words, like "Egan," for the name of former Bridgeport Bishop Edward Egan. "I think I feel a little exhausted by the whole thing," said McKiernan. "It's depressing you have to struggle so hard to look at the documents and then when you look at them you realize it's missing 1,488 pages." McKiernan said the diocese withheld those pages, claiming they were personnel files. But it could have been worse. McKiernan said Chicago court officials recently used e-mails to distribute a similar-sized document in another priest case. It turns out that Connecticut officials had good instincts – many peoples' computers crashed from trying to download the large Chicago file.
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