LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Observed
By Kevin Roderick | January 7, 2013
Superior Court Judge Emilie H. Elias reversed a private mediator and ordered the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to release 30,000 pages of internal files without blanking out the names of church officials and priests who were involved in the church’s handling of sex abuse allegations or who were accused themselves. The judge acted on a request by the Los Angeles Times and Associated Press to include names when the files are released to the public under a 2007 settlement with more than 500 victims.
Lawyers for the archdiocese argued that the mediator, retired federal Judge Dickran Tevrizian, was right to allow many names to be redacted in order to spare the church from further embarrassment and to proptect those name from guiult by association with the scandal. The lead archdiocese lawyer, J. Michael Hennigan, also argued that it would be a massive, months-long job to go back and un-redact the names. But the media outlets argued that the names of the archdiocese hierarchy were essential for the public to understand how the scandal occurred, the Times story says. Elias agreed that the files should not be redacted before going public, even though they contain psychiatric and personnel records.
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