BATON ROUGE (LA)
Acadiana Advocate [Lafayette LA]
June 3, 2024
Thank you to the Legislature for enacting the lookback law, and thank you to Attorney General Liz Murrill and the majority of Louisiana Supreme Court, which will reconsider their decision. I hope the specious reasoning of Justice Jeff Hughes won’t sway the court’s decision this time.
Hughes’ dissent to the reconsideration was all over the place. He mocked the consideration of the law of adult survivors of childhood abuse to survivors other crimes saying, “Adult rape victims? Holocaust survivors? Descendants of the enslaved? Which of these shall we favor?” He trivialized and disparaged every one of these people with this opinion. Hughes doesn’t see what is at stake for adult survivors of child sex abuse by clergy.
He mentioned equal protection and said that didn’t happen for children over many decades. The government gave consideration to Roman Catholic clerics and bishops. The children and teens sexually abused were just as Catholic as the priests, deacons and religious. The religion elevates clerics as more important than others, but the law of this nation discourages that. For all these decades, local police and municipalities failed to offer equal protection. The Legislature saw that, and the Supreme Court needs to see that, too.
Hughes said, “Some victims of crime have teams of lawyers that proclaim, ‘The sky’s the limit.’ Some die in the dark. Pray for them all.”
As a survivor of Catholic sex abuse, I don’t want Hughes’ prayers. I want him to do his job as a justice. I already have friends to pray with me on this. We pray for justice that the lookback law is upheld.
HENRI ANDRE FOURROUX III
New Orleans