Church To Seek Reversal Of Law That Extended Time Abuse Accusers Can Sue

By Dave Altimari
Hartford Courant
September 19, 2014

http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-diocese-lawsuit-overturn-20140919-story.html

The Archdiocese of Hartford is seeking to have the state Supreme Court overturn a $1 million verdict in a priest sex abuse case while at the same time reversing a state law that extended the amount of time accusers can file a lawsuit against it.

In Feb. 2012 a jury in Waterbury awarded a former altar boy $1 million following a trial in which the victim, identified as Jacob Doe in court papers, testified that he and another friend were repeatedly molested and sexually assaulted by the Rev. Ivan Ferguson and a friend of the priest.

The diocese is asking the Supreme Court to overturn that verdict based on a variety of claims – including that the trial judge erred by not allowing an expert witnesses to testify for the church and by allowing testimony from a deposition of Ferguson to be heard by the jury.

But the most controversial argument is the claim that a state law last updated in 2002 that bumped the statute of limitations when a victim of sexual abuse could file lawsuit to 30 years is unconstitutional and should be stricken.

The court will hear arguments on Monday, but it will likely be months before a ruling is issued.

In 2002, the state legislature voted to extend the statute of limitation for civil cases on sex assault claims to 30 years from when a complainant reaches 18. It had previously been 17 years. The law was retroactive.

In its 56-page legal brief, the diocese's attorneys claim that under the original law Jacob Doe would have had until 1988 to file a lawsuit and even after it was initially amended in 1991 to the 17-year statute the plaintiff's right to file a lawsuit would have expired in 2003.

The diocese is arguing it was only when the statute was changed again that the plaintiff was able to file the lawsuit and that is not only unconstitutional but unfair to the church or any other institution.

"Any act they have ever done, and any act they have ever failed to do, may come back to haunt them in a tort action long after the statute has run, long after witnesses have died or their memories have faded, long after documents have disappeared, long after insurance limits have become obsolete, long after societal standards have changed, and long after the misconduct, if disclosed earlier, might have been directly addressed and remedied," Attorney Wesley Horton wrote.

Horton, a well known constitutional lawyer who argued the landmark Scheff vs. O'Neill case before the Supreme Court has been hired by the diocese to argue this case.

But New Haven attorney Thomas McNamara said the legislature's intent in extending the statute of limitations was clear – to help minor victims of sexual abuse come to terms with what happened to them.

"The legislative purpose behind the extension is legitimate, namely to help minor victims of sexual abuse come to terms with what happened to them and to seek redress for one of the most damaging types of injury that can be incurred by a minor," McNamara wrote.

The diocese was first made aware of Ferguson's abuse by a phone call in 1979. At the time Ferguson was a teacher at Northwest Catholic High School in West Hartford.

At the trial, testimony showed that when former Archbishop John F. Whealon confronted him about the 1979 allegation, Ferguson admitted to the abuse. Ferguson was sent to a treatment facility in Massachusetts. Two years later Whealon appointed Ferguson priest director of a Derby school.

Ferguson and his boyfriend were accused of abusing Doe and his childhood friend at, among other places, the rectory to which Ferguson had been reassigned in Derby. At the time of the abuse, from 1981 to 1983, the boys attended the school. Ferguson died in 2002.