CHARLESTON (SC)
The Post and Courier [Charleston SC]
January 17, 2025
By Nick Reynolds
South Carolina’s high court has ruled an alleged victim of sexual abuse within the Catholic Diocese of Charleston in the 1970s can pursue their case against the church after it tried to claim immunity under a long-defunct state law protecting charitable organizations from legal action.
The years-old case, filed in August 2018, alleged a John Doe was sexually abused as a junior high school student by two now-deceased employees of the diocese’s Sacred Heart Catholic School in 1969 and 1971.
In addition to relief for the sexual abuse and emotional distress that resulted from the incident, the plaintiff also accused the diocese of gross negligence in relation to the incident along with a bevy of other charges ranging from fraudulent concealment and civil conspiracy to a breach of contract.
The church claimed it was exempt from legal liability under South Carolina’s now-defunct doctrine of charitable immunity, a controversial legal precedent established in England in the mid-19th century that the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned in a 1981 decision against the Greater Greenville YMCA.
The diocese argued that because the doctrine was still in place at the time the alleged abuse occurred, the church was exempt from liability. It cited a 1973 decision in Jeffcoat v. Caine that determined charitable immunity never extended to so-called “intentional torts” like the case filed against the diocese.
A series of lower courts agreed, upholding the church’s immunity all the way to the South Carolina Supreme Court.
The state’s high court agreed as well. But it also reasoned in its unanimous decision that the precedents set by the court 1973 decision did not overrule the decisions made in the half-century after Jeffcoat, a fact that would allow the John Doe’s case against the diocese to advance.
“Jeffcoat did not change the law,” Justice Garrison Hill wrote in the Jan 15 decision. “It confirmed what the law had always been: that charitable immunity never extended to intentional torts. Nothing in our decisions in the half century since Jeffcoat shakes that judgment. The doctrine of charitable immunity therefore does not bar Petitioner’s intentional tort claims against the Diocese.”
The decision does not mean the church is liable. It simply means the complainant can pursue his case against the church in a lower court, a process their attorney previously told The Post and Courier could take months or even years to complete.
“Based on the Court’s decision, this case will continue to proceed through the legal process,” the diocese said in a statement. “We cannot comment further since this is pending litigation.”
The latest case comes more than a decade after the church paid millions of dollars in settlements to a number of sex abuse victims dating back decades.