AUSTIN (TX)
Baptist News Global [Jacksonville FL]
August 26, 2024
By David Bumgardner and Mark Wingfield
More than 10,000 pages of highly confidential and legally protected information from a sexual abuse victim’s case against Paige Patterson and Southwestern Seminary were published publicly online for about three days this weekend.
The apparent clerical error occurred as case materials in Jane Roe v. Leighton Paige Patterson and Southwestern Seminary were transferred from the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to the Texas Supreme Court. The Fifth Circuit has asked the Texas high court to rule on one particular issue in the case, which both Southwestern and Patterson have sought to have thrown out for lack of merit.
Four files containing a combined 10,000 pages of sealed information were left open for public view.
Visible information included the victim’s name, medical and psychiatric records, Social Security number, driver’s license number, banking information, address, phone number, email address, police reports of her alleged assaults, sealed testimony, and other personal identifying information and confidential communication implicating several dozens of individuals with a relationship to the case and the seminary.
Four files containing a combined 10,000 pages of sealed information were left open for public view.
It is BNG’s policy not to publicly identify sexual abuse victims unless they want their identity known. In this case, the former seminary student who says she was assaulted on multiple occasions by another student who also was a seminary employee has fought vigorously to protect her identity.
According to federal law and U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the confidentiality order that shields such court documents only applies to the parties involved and does not extend to third parties — such as media — that obtain the sealed material without coercion or deceit. Nevertheless, BNG will not reveal protected identities. As a news service, however, BNG will report on the overall themes of what was found in the documents made public by the court’s error.
Allegations against Paige Patterson
In that regard, the filings reveal damning new allegations against former Southwestern Seminary President Paige Patterson.
Patterson was fired by seminary trustees, in part, because of his mishandling of this case of reported sexual abuse. It has been widely reported that Patterson said in an email that he would seek to “break her down” in a private meeting to extract some confession of sin.
Buried in the thousands of pages are allegations from Jane Roe that in an initial meeting where she first reported the sexual assault to Patterson and a group of “all men,” Patterson asked Roe a series of “unnecessarily invasive questions about the allegations,” including if the alleged assailant (who is now deceased and testified under oath to a prior consensual sexual history with several other women) had “ejaculated” as she was being raped and “if she had had her period.” She also alleges Patterson told her it was “good” that she was raped because “the right man wouldn’t care if she was a virgin or not.”
After Patterson expelled Roe’s alleged assailant for unlawfully possessing nine firearms in his dormitory room on campus, Roe had a subsequent meeting with Patterson. In that meeting, she claims Patterson asked if she had sent nude photographs of herself to the perpetrator. BNG’s initial review of the thousands of pages of sealed documents has not turned up any evidence that Roe ever took explicit photos of herself and sent them to the assailant. However, Roe alleged the assailant did take a photograph of her naked body following one of her several sexual assaults by his hands as he boasted that she was now the “eighth or ninth virgin” he had slept with.
She also claims Patterson downplayed the real threat of her alleged assailant carrying weapons, wondering if they might have been an airsoft gun or a fake gun. Yet Patterson himself expelled the man for possessing real weapons in his dorm room.
Roe’s mother and sister were present at the meeting mentioned above. Roe alleges Patterson said Roe’s sister could only speak if she raised her hand and asked for permission. And Roe alleges that when her mother asked Patterson how the assailant, who had a criminal history, was allowed into Southwestern, Patterson allegedly lunged across his desk, sternly pointed his finger in her face, and said he would “unleash lawyers” if she “questioned” his “leadership” again.
Also, dozens of documents outline multiple other sex scandals under Patterson’s tenure at Southwestern, including narratives of both consensual sexual escapades and other alleged abusive encounters.
How were these documents made public?
As to how these reams of sealed documents were made public for at least three days, Texas Supreme Court Director of Public Affairs Amy Starnes issued the following statement to BNG:
The Supreme Court Clerk’s Office discovered on Saturday, August 24, that sealed documents in a case were visible on the Court’s website. The Clerk’s Office took immediate action to remove the documents from public view and the Office of Court Administration’s IT staff resolved the issue. The Court’s case search system was restored for public use on Sunday, August 25. There was no data breach or foul play involved.
BNG reached out to the law firm representing Patterson for comment and received no reply. BNG’s request for comment from Jane Roe’s attorney, Sheila Haddock of The Zalkin Law Firm, resulted in two emails demanding BNG not even report on the unintentional leak of sealed court records.
“Any discussion of the substance of the documents or sharing of information contained in the documents is likewise prohibited under the order,” she asserted.
“The release of such highly confidential documents would almost certainly cause enormous pain for a survivor of sexual assault, and for survivors everywhere.”
BNG has consulted with its own media lawyers and found Haddock’s description to be inaccurate, based on established case law.
BNG spoke with a court clerk in the federal court in the Eastern District of Texas (the original jurisdiction of Roe v. Patterson), who expressed shock at the error. She further stated that the court was unaware such an error had occurred.
Christa Brown, a sexual abuse survivor advocate and retired attorney, told BNG the repercussions of such a breach of confidentiality by the court clerk could be far-reaching.
“However this happened — and I’m presuming it was an egregious mistake — the release of such highly confidential documents would almost certainly cause enormous pain for a survivor of sexual assault, and for survivors everywhere. It will lessen confidence in the justice system. The Texas Supreme Court should conduct an investigation into exactly how this happened and make public the results.
“As revealed in these allegations, the brutishness of Patterson’s invasive inquisition of Roe should offend all decent human beings. But of course, this is the SBC, where decency sometimes gets derailed by the worship of power. In that room of ‘all men,’ why did they all sit still for such bullying of an alleged sexual assault survivor?”
Status of the case
BNG reported in May that what remains of Roe’s defamation suit now comes down to two questions sent from the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to the Texas Supreme Court.
The federal appeals court published an opinion May 3 that keeps alive Jane Roe’s case against the seminary and its former president. Before deciding on Roe’s appeal of a U.S. District court’s dismissal of her case in April, the Fifth Circuit says it needs advice from the Texas Supreme Court on two questions:
- Can a person who supplies defamatory material to another for publication be liable for defamation?
- If so, can a defamation plaintiff survive summary judgment by presenting evidence that a defendant was involved in preparing a defamatory publication, without identifying any specific statements made by the defendant?
At issue is that third parties other than Patterson — also seminary employees — are alleged to have spread defamatory information about Roe allegedly supplied to them by Patterson.