GUAM
Hawaii Public Radio
[with audio]
By NEAL CONAN
This week, the Archdiocese of Guam asked a federal court to dismiss dozens of law suits filed by former altar boys who say they were raped and assaulted by priests as far back as the 1970s. The key to the suits was a law passed last year that lifted the statute of limitations, and as we hear from Neal Conan in today’s Pacific News Minute, that law is also the basis of the Archdiocese’s argument.
Under the old law, suits had to be filed within one or two years after the alleged abuse. But as outrage grew following publication of the altar boys stories, the legislature approved a bill that removed the time limit entirely. Even as he signed the bill, Governor Eddie Calvo wondered whether it was constitutional to lift the statute of limitations retroactively. Afterwards, 47 cases were filed, which ask for millions of dollars in damages from individual priests, from the Archdiocese and, in some instances, from the Boy Scouts.
On Monday, attorneys for the Archdiocese argued that, even if the law is constitutional, it only applies to perpetrators, and not to third parties.
Last week, attorneys for Archbishop Anthony Apuron asked the federal court to find the 2016 law entirely unconstitutional, and dismiss the four suits that name him as an abuser.
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