BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun [Baltimore MD]
October 15, 2024
By Alex Mann
Between 900 and 1,000 people have filed claims in the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s bankruptcy case, alleging they were sexually abused as children by people employed by the Catholic Church’s, a lawyer for a committee of abuse survivors, said during a hearing Tuesday.
The figure adds scope to the scourge of clergy sexual abuse in Maryland. Last year, the state attorney general’s office released a report documenting the torment of more than 600 children by 156 clergy and other church officials dating to the 1940s and spanning Baltimore and nine other counties. Officials maintained there likely were more victims than investigators had identified.
“Wow. Woah,” said David Lorenz, Maryland director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, after being informed of the estimate. “My heart sinks. There’s that many people that got hurt. It’s a stab in the heart. I wouldn’t have guessed it was that many.”
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In an emailed statement to The Sun, Christian Kendzierski, a spokesman for the archdiocese, commended survivors for coming forward.
“The Archdiocese knows that behind these claims lie horrible and tragic stories. Stories of abuse, stories of misuse of power and stories of how the most innocent were harmed,” Kendzierski said. “Our goals in this process include compensating those individuals with the aim of helping to provide a possible path toward healing. The Archdiocese continues to acknowledge the courage of the victim-survivors who have stepped forward, many for the first time, during this process.”
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michelle M. Harner said she called Tuesday’s hearing to “continue the flow of information” in a highly technical and, at times, confidential legal proceeding.
The archdiocese, America’s oldest, declared bankruptcy Sept. 29, 2023, two days before the effective date of a new law that erased time limits for people who were sexually assaulted as children to sue their abusers and the institutions that enabled their torment.
By filing for bankruptcy, the church aimed to limit its liability and protect its assets. Archdiocesan officials also attributed the decision to a desire to compensate all survivors of abuse, rather than paying immense sums of money to a few.
As a result, lawsuits slated for state court had to be repurposed into proof of claim forms in bankruptcy court. The deadline for such claims came and went with hundreds filing. But until Tuesday, there had been no official estimates offered.
Attorneys in the case are currently involved in the critical mediation phase, where they hash out behind closed doors such issues as how many claims there are; how much money the archdiocese, its parishes and insurers have to contribute to settle them; and how the church will prevent such abuse from occurring in the future.
“The silence in the court can be unsettling to those in the process,” Harner said.
Edwin Caldie, the lawyer who estimated the number of claims filed, describing the survivors who came forward as courageous, and encouraged them to trust the bankruptcy process, particularly the committee chosen to represent all survivors’ interests. He called the seven committee members as “unusually devoted,” intelligent and “dogged in their process.”
“I’ve never worked with a group of people like them,” said Caldie, who is tasked with representing the interests of all victims in the bankruptcy case.
He later added, “the mediation process, which has to be confidential, is moving forward.”
Phillip D. Anker, an attorney for one of the archdiocese’s insurers, urged patience.
“I think that this process is going to take a while. It’s going to take a lot of time given the issues involved,” said Anker, who represents the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co., Hartford Casualty Insurance Co. and Hartford Fire Insurance Co.
Tensions between insurers, the archdiocese and survivors committee mounted ahead of mediation, with the church filing suit against its insurers for alleged breach of contract. The church and insurers agreed to table the lawsuit so long as the insurance companies were allowed to nominate a third mediator, in addition to the two originally approved by Harner: Robert J. Faris, chief judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Hawaii and Brian J. Nash, an attorney who specializes in mediation.
Anker described the process of evaluating abuse claims as time intensive.
He said each claim has to be evaluated through the lens of whether the archdiocese is liable and, if so, which of its insurance policies were applicable at the time of the alleged abuse.
Mediation, Anker said, is like “the beginning of a marathon.”