LAFAYETTE (LA)
Acadiana Advocate [Lafayette LA]
October 28, 2024
By Claire Taylor
A Lafayette district judge on Monday rejected attempts by the Diocese of Lafayette to dismiss some claims by an alleged victim of priest sexual abuse but ordered disclosure of the victim’s name to be filed under seal.
Lafayette attorneys Seth Mansfield and Collin Melancon filed a lawsuit in August in 15th Judicial Court in Lafayette on behalf of the alleged victim identified in court documents as “JM John Doe” against the Diocese of Lafayette and Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church in Lafayette.
Lafayette is believed to be the first place where a Catholic priest, Gilbert Gauthe, was convicted of child abuse and jailed in the 1980s, long before such cases became public elsewhere. Gauthe served 10 years of a 20-year sentence after admitting he abused more than 30 children in the 1970s and 1980s.
The state Supreme Court in June ruled that victims of clerical sexual abuse have another three years to file lawsuits, despite when the abuse took place, leading to a new round of a dozen lawsuits against the diocese and its churches for employing priests with a proclivity for abusing children and for not reporting the abuse.
Doe was a student at Immaculate Heart of Mary from 1966-1976, during which time he alleges he was the victim of sexual assault, battery, abuse and molestation by the Revs. Joseph Guidry, Raymond Jones and Alvin Dixon at the school and church.
The lawsuit details four causes of action — negligence, fraudulent concealment, public nuisance and vicarious liability — and seeks a jury trial and damages.
Lafayette attorney Gil Dozier, representing the diocese, challenged parts of the lawsuit, alleging no cause of action for Doe’s claims of clergy malpractice, fraudulent concealment, invasion of privacy, vicarious liability and pleading through a pseudonym.
Judge Thomas Frederick ruled Monday against all of Dozier’s challenges except the use of a pseudonym. Dozier said he respects the plaintiff’s desire to keep his name from the public but that the law requires a name to file suit.
Frederick granted that argument and ordered Mansfield to file a document under seal that includes Doe’s full name, date of birth, Social Security number and current address. He also ordered sealed attachments Dozier submitted Monday containing judgments in the 15th and 16th Judicial Districts that disclose the names of sexual abuse victims.
One of the exceptions argued in court Monday involved what Dozier called no cause of action for a claim of clergy malpractice. Louisiana law, he said, does not recognize claims of clergy malpractice. The case, he said, is a negligence claim.
Dozier accused Mansfield of trying to argue the case based on religious doctrine rather than as a non-secular case.
Mansfield’s lawsuit on behalf of Doe sites the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People published in June 2002, decades after Doe’s alleged abuse, by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which was adopted by the diocese. The charter notes one means of dealing with the crisis of abuse in the church will be through reparations, the lawsuit states.
Dozier argued the charter in referring to reparations mean prayers or devotions, not a legal duty or standard of law. The 1st Amendment to the Constitution, he said, prohibits the insertion of religion into the courts.
Mansfield said the fear is that removing the 2002 charter from the petition would limit the victim’s discovery of evidence in the case.
The charter, Mansfield argued, is an institutional public proclamation, the same as if a big box retailer had a “slip and fall” policy. He would introduce that in a lawsuit, he said.
Frederick ruled against Dozier, saying he disagrees with Dozier’s classifying the petition as clergy malpractice when Mansfield is simply stating facts.
Email Claire Taylor at ctaylor@theadvocate.com.