AUGUSTA (ME)
National Catholic Register - EWTN [Irondale AL]
January 31, 2025
By Matthew McDonald
Thirteen people alleging childhood sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and teachers decades ago cannot file civil lawsuits because a retroactive law eliminating the statute of limitations violates the state constitution, Maine’s highest court ruled Jan. 28.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s 5-2 decision in Robert E. Dupuis v. Roman Catholic Bishop of Portlandfound that an expired statute of limitations timeframe amounts to a “vested right” for potential defendants that can’t be eliminated after the fact.
But attorney Michael Bigos, who represents the plaintiffs, said he’s looking for a way around the ruling by focusing on what he called “fraudulent concealment claims and other causes of action” by the Diocese of Portland, which he suggested might effectively extend the time limit for filing civil lawsuits against it.
Bigos said the diocese, which includes the whole state, “knew about rampant sexual abuse by its priests, nuns and teachers for decades and chose to protect these known predators instead of the children in their care.”
“We are disappointed by the Court’s decision. Of course, there is no statute of limitations on the enduring pain caused by childhood sexual abuse. These survivors deserve accountability from those who enabled child sex abuse and to receive long overdue justice,” said Bigos.
“The survivors are not done seeking justice,” Bigos said in a written statement. “We are not giving up.”
Bishop James Ruggieri, who became bishop of Portland in May 2024, after the initial lawsuits were filed, acknowledged the pain of what he called “the victims and survivors.”
“The reprehensible conduct of certain clergy during that era represents a profoundly painful time that still has effects we all experience today,” Bishop Ruggieri said in a written statement.
He said the diocese will continue to investigate accusations of sex abuse “regardless of the timeline” and that the diocese will continue “providing counseling and support services to those who have come forward.”
“A degree of uncertainty still remains, and in the coming days, weeks, and months, in consultation with diocesan, parish, and lay advisors, I will prayerfully assess the path forward for the diocese,” Bishop Ruggieri said. “I am hopeful that this decision will allow us as a diocese to commit to strengthening the core mission of the Church in Maine with even greater humility and devotion.”
State Courts Split On Statutes of Limitations
At issue was whether the Maine State Legislature can abolish a deadline for filing a civil lawsuit in child sex abuse claims after that deadline has already passed — a matter on which supreme courts in various states have come to varying conclusions.
Maine’s statute of limitations for claims of sexual abuse against minors was six years until 1991, when the State Legislature increased it to 12 years. In 2000, the Legislature eliminated the time limit for filing civil lawsuits in such cases.
But in 2021, the Legislature approved a statute allowing such lawsuits “regardless of the date of the sexual act and regardless of whether the statute of limitations on such actions expired prior to the effective date” of the new law.
That violates the Maine Constitution, the high court said in the majority opinion, which has what it called “a fundamental antipathy to retroactivity.”
Allowing such after-the-fact tinkering with a statute of limitation, the court said, “is not only contrary to our precedent but unsupported by our constitutional text and the common law, and is amorphous, inconsistent, unworkable, and could potentially trample constitutionally protected rights based on transient majority inclination or the view of an individual judge.”
“Once a statute of limitations has expired for a claim, a right to be free of that claim has vested, and the claim cannot be revived,” the Maine majority opinion states.
Most of the plaintiffs in the lawsuits are anonymous, but the lead plaintiff, Robert Dupuis, agreed to have his name publicly attached to the case.
According to the dissent, Dupuis in 1961 as a 12-year-old boy took a part-time summer job with his parish in Old Town, Maine, “assisting with groundskeeping, banquet setup, and other tasks at the church,” under the supervision of a priest there, who on payday would call him into a private meeting in his office for what he called “prayer sessions” and then sexually abuse him. Dupuis didn’t tell anybody about it until he was in his 40s, long after the statute of limitations at the time had expired.
The two dissenting justices disagreed with the majority’s contention that an expired time limit amounts to a “vested interest” for a potential defendant, and they called the 2021 Maine statute eliminating the time limit retroactively “a reasonable legislative response consistent with due process.”
The Maine court’s majority opinion notes that supreme courts in some states have allowed retroactive quashing of a statute of limitations in sex-abuse-of-minors cases, while others have rejected it.
The Maine court’s majority opinion quotes the Utah Supreme Court, which in a June 2020 case called Mitchell v. Roberts called child sex abuse claims “heart-wrenching” and said the plaintiffs deserve “enormous sympathy,” but that the state constitution there provides “a clear answer” that retroactively eliminating a statute of limitations defense isn’t allowable.