UNITED STATES
Hamilton and Griffin on Rights
Professor Marci A. Hamilton
Jun 25, 2016
Here is what the rumor mill says some Pennsylvania Senators are considering, with a guide to help you understand it….
When it comes to behind-the-scenes chicanery against child sex abuse victims, no one holds a candle to the insurance and Catholic Conference lobbyists and bishops. They have pulled out all the stops against victims’ access to justice, especially when states have considered windows or revival bills that permit survivors with expired statutes of limitations (“SOLs”) to go foreard despite the SOL. One or more have pulled some stunners in various states, with the result that they shut victims out of court and preserved the secrets of predators and the institutions engaged in self-protection.
As I discuss in Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children, in Colorado, Bishop Chaput put to work a public relations strategy to mislead Catholics in the pews into thinking a window is “anti-Catholic” and succeeded even though that is false. In Ohio, the night before a window would have passed in the House, the bishops persuaded members to strip out the window portion of the bill and replace it with a useless and unconstitutional “civil registry,” which has done zero for survivors.
In every state to consider revival legislation, the bishops have also trotted out lawyers with little knowledge of constitutional law to argue that a window or revival legislation is “unconstitutional.” Then when the bill passed, they challenged its constitutionality and lost in court—in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, and Massachusetts.
In the latest Pennsylvania chapter, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Stewart Greenleaf, put together no less than 5 people to testify that it is supposedly unconstitutional to revive an expired SOL in Pennsylvania. To quote survivor Michelle Gonsmann in her published letter to the Altoona Mirror: “Greenleaf lined up a parade of attorneys, most of whom had no true constitutional expertise but were deeply involved in the Catholic church or Catholic universities. These experts were clearly biased toward the Catholic church.”
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