NEW YORK (NY)
TIME
October 31, 2017
By John Manly
John Manly is the founding partner of Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, California’s leading law firm representing child victims of sexual abuse. The firm has represented more than 150 victims of clergy sexual abuse in California and hundreds of others throughout the United States. The firm also represented plaintiffs in the $140,000,000 settlement against LAUSD in the Miramonte case, the largest sex abuse settlement against a School District in the US and currently represents more than 100 alleged victims of former US Olympic Gymnastics Team Dr. Larry Nassar.
The Harvey Weinstein scandal has done more than reveal the culture of sexual abuse that has infected the entertainment industry for generations. It has placed a spotlight on perpetrators and those who protect them using the despicable practice of non-disclosure agreements to intimidate and silence victims.
Throughout the past 25 years I have represented thousands of sexual assault victims in civil lawsuits against their molesters and the institutions that facilitated their abuse. Most of these victims were children at the time they were abused. One thing is common through all these cases, the perpetrators and their accomplices dwarf their victims in wealth and power. Indeed, sexual assault is not about sex, it’s about power.
The Catholic Church, media conglomerates, international sports organizations, major universities, public school districts, and corporations have all used non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of sexual assault and molestation — even when those victims are children.
Some attorneys contend that these agreements, which amount to buying the silence of victims, benefit victims by making it faster and easier to settle cases and get them financial compensations.
That is rarely true. Far more often these agreements protect serial perpetrators often shielding them from criminal prosecution and allowing them to seek new victims. How can anyone possibly justify allowing a priest, teacher, doctor or coach to hide their crimes from the public and continue having access to children?
For many years the Roman Catholic heirarchy paid victims an average of $250,000 to settle cases under confidentiality agreements then moved the priests accused of molesting them to other parishes where they continued their abuse.
That practice was ended by the Catholic bishops in 2002, largely as a result of demands made by survivors and their attorneys, as the number of cases against priests continued to escalate.
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