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	Court Affirms Ruling Favoring Catholic Diocese of Rapid City Rapid City Journal January 26, 2011 http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/news/article_86f0b97c-296f-11e0-889b-001cc4c002e0.html A former Philip woman who has accused a Catholic priest of raping her in 1987 was told by an appeals court on Tuesday that she can't sue the Diocese of Rapid City for damages because she failed to bring her lawsuit in time. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis affirmed U.S. District Court Judge Karen Schreier's 2010 decision that Pamela Baye and her husband, Sylvan Baye, filed a lawsuit against the diocese more than 10 years too late, given South Dakota's statute of limitations on sexual assault and other crimes. In her complaint, Pamela Baye accused the now-deceased priest, the Rev. Christopher Scadron, of sexual assault when she sought pastoral counseling to deal with her history of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father. In court documents, Baye claims other men and her mother participated in the abuse and that she was diagnosed as an adult with a dissociative identity disorder as a result of the abuse that caused her to develop as many as 40 personalities. Her complaint also said she "sometimes suffered loss of time and memory when one of the alternate personalities would appear during a traumatic event." She has also been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, insomnia, panic disorder, anxiety disorder and suicidal ideation and remains in therapy and unable to work. South Dakota law says the time for bringing a civil action for assault has to commence within two years of the injury, with an additional five years allowed if the victim was mentally ill at the time of the injury. It voids those time limitations for sexual abuse victims who were children at the time of their abuse, but it does not do the same for people who were adults when an assault occurred. Baye was 23 at the time of the alleged rape, but she argued that the statute of limitations shouldn't apply to her case, since she didn't recover the memory of the abuse until 2006, when one of her alternate personalities revealed it to a friend. She told that person that Scadron, then a 67-year-old priest at Sacred Heart Church in Philip, raped her while they were kneeling at the church altar and threatened her children if she told anyone of the assault. The friend then told Baye's therapist, who informed Baye of the memory. The appeals court affirmed that without specific legislation allowing adults to seek civil damages from the time of discovery, not time of occurrence, Baye is barred from suing a third party for damages. Baye, now 46 and living in Iowa, sued the diocese in 2007 under a "vicarious liability" theory for assault and battery, sexual abuse and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She also sued for breach of fiduciary duty, fiduciary fraud and negligent hiring, supervision and retention. Her husband sued for loss of consortium. "How sad that church officials try to exploit legal technicalities in a clergy sexual assault case," said Barbara Dorris, outreach director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "It's even sadder that Catholic officials are apparently succeeding in this callous effort. Those who report being sexually violated by clerics deserve their day in court. They shouldn't be silenced because of archaic, arbitrary and predator-friendly statutes of limitations." Scadron died in 2002 in Rapid City at the age of 81, four years before Baye said she discovered the abuse memories. Scadron didn't become a Catholic priest until the age of 62. He was ordained in 1983 by the Diocese of Rapid City at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Rapid City and served in Philip from 1983 to 1990, but left the diocese of Rapid City for a Texas diocese in 1991, retiring from the priesthood in 1993. In court documents, Baye claims that years before joining the Rapid City diocese, Scadron was prevented from joining the Franciscan religion order because he was disobedient, immature and lacking in judgment and that he "received criticism for his preaching, for misstating canon law and for distancing himself from his colleagues." His employee records contain no allegations of abuse, but did contain a parishioner letter withdrawing unidentified charges against Scadron, court records said. Contact Mary Garrigan at 394-8424 or mary.garrigan@rapidcityjournal.com
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