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	For Sex Abuse Victim, More Pain The Oregonian January 5, 2011 http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/01/for_sex_abuse_victim_more_pain.html It's hard to imagine the pain brought to a man who suffered sexual abuse by a former Portland priest whose behavior was so egregious that the church would pay him $900,000 to make his complaint go away. It's harder yet to imagine how the man saw none of the money. Lawyers did. And now there's a new lawsuit and an ethics complaint to square things, as if to extend and spread pain as widely as possible. This is a deeply painful outcome that isn't quite yet an outcome -- if everyone's meter keeps running until fairness is declared in court, the victim could end up owing money. That's a double indemnity not even Raymond Chandler would likely have fathomed. The case, chronicled this week by The Oregonian's Aimee Green, is but a financial speck in the more than $3 billion paid nationwide to victims of Roman Catholic priests in the last two decades. At the center is a man identified by the initials G.B., abused by the Rev. Thomas Laughlin, pastor of Portland's All Saints parish who in 1983 pleaded guilty to molesting two boys and was later defrocked. While Laughlin's admission marked the first major pedophile scandal in the Archdiocese of Portland, he would finally be accused of abusing dozens of boys and, by 2005, cost the church more than $11 million in payouts. It's fair to say Laughlin, along with the pedophile priest Maurice Grammond, opened a floodgate of Oregon grief that would push $100 million in costs upon the Archdiocese of Portland and, to its astonishment in 2004, bankruptcy. If the money seems everywhere, check again. G.B., who subsists on $400 to $500 a month in Social Security disability payments, has seen none, other than the promise of $23,000 remaining after $877,000 is deducted for lawyers' services. Sadly, and even tragically, the scenario in which the client loses big is not rare. Green's account shows that G.B. fired his first lawyer in 2003 after deciding that a tendered settlement of $650,000 would be inadequate and after more than two years of effort. G.B. hired another lawyer who, in three days' time, upped the payout to $900,000, and G.B. approved. But the second lawyer, G.B.'s lawsuit alleges, took a standard one-third contingency fee of $300,000; and the first lawyer, who went unpaid, twice prevailed in courts that ruled G.B. owed him $527,000 for services adequately performed. There are other ins and outs of this case, which will play out for more dollars yet. But suffice to say that G.B. and his lawyers were evidently not on the same page when it came to fees and responsibilities for them -- particularly in the event of changing representation. Yes, the Oregon State Bar publishes from its website a legible account of how fees work, with responsibilties to all made plain. And both the Bar and the Multnomah Bar Association, with 4,700 members, stand available to anyone seeking guidance on litigation or the role of mediation and arbitration. But somehow even the best messages appear lost on the victim, G.B., mired now in quicksand. No one, meanwhile, seems able to say how, without blaming the victim, this state of affairs passes as humane justice or even approximates a sane outcome. It is possible that G.B. was and is what's known in the trade as a difficult client. That's pale excuse, however, for a predicament as punishing as this. Nobody really wants this to stand as fairness for a man who was bold enough a decade ago to name his tormenter in the hopes of putting his life's pain behind him.
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