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	Bishop Backs Bills Allowing Old Abuse Cases By Jodi Wilgoren The New York Times [Ohio] January 12, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/national /12abuse.html?ex=1139634000&en=0a5bf55ea54da254&ei=5070 Saying that he had been sexually abused as a teenage seminarian, a Roman Catholic bishop on Wednesday became the highest-ranking member of the church to endorse legislation in various states that would loosen the statute of limitations on lawsuits relating to sexual abuse by clergy members. The bishop, Thomas J. Gumbleton, is a longtime auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Detroit and a fixture of the church's left wing, frequently joining in fasts, prayer vigils and civil disobedience. He said in a telephone interview, "I have a sense of how difficult it is for someone who has been abused to come forward." Bishop Gumbleton spent the afternoon making personal appeals to lawmakers in Ohio, where a bill under consideration would allow people under the age of 52 with claims of abuse to sue. The church has vigorously opposed efforts to change the laws in Ohio and elsewhere - which generally limit civil claims to within a few years of an incident - particularly since 2003, when California's dioceses were flooded with 800 suits after that state opened a one-year window for old claims. "It seemed to me I could add some credibility to my testimony by letting the legislators know what had happened," Bishop Gumbleton, 75, said in explaining the disclosure about his own abuse. "It's hard for people who haven't undergone this type of thing to understand why you wouldn't come forward, but it's very hard." Bishop Gumbleton said that when he was a 15-year-old seminary student, a priest slipped a hand down his pants while roughhousing on several occasions. He said the priest died several years ago, and he declined to name him because "I would want him to be able to defend himself if he thought he could or should." Until preparing his statement this week, which was reported Wednesday in The Washington Post, Bishop Gumbleton said he had never told anyone about the abuse - not his parents, not another priest, not his boss, and not his fellow bishops. He also said he never confronted the abuser, who remained in the Detroit diocese, although the two only rarely crossed paths. Until the sexual abuse scandals of the last year, he said, "I had pretty much blocked it out." He said that he was not at the 2002 meeting in Dallas, where the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops passed a landmark zero tolerance policy on sexual abuse, but he said that at another meeting in Washington that year "I almost came forward," then found "the conversation changed" subjects. Local and national Catholic leaders expressed regret over the abuse but said the revelation did not change their opposition to allowing old claims to be filed. "As we would with any person in his situation, the archdiocese stands by its commitment to provide counseling assistance as needed," Msgr. Ricardo Bass of Detroit said in a statement, adding that the statute of limitations "has served our society well in protecting the rights of everyone, especially after a long passage of time." Msgr. Francis Maniscalco, director of communications for the bishops' conference, said in an interview that removing the time limits on lawsuits "can put an extraordinary burden on the church." "It opens up cases that are many years old, that the people on the scene today were not in any way responsible for, and could cause the dioceses to have to put aside large amounts of money that they would normally put into the services of their own people," Monsignor Maniscalco said. David Clohessy, director of the Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, said that in addition to Ohio, legislation to lift the time limits on lawsuits has also been introduced in Pennsylvania and New York, and that lawmakers in half a dozen other states are beginning to consider similar bills. Mr. Clohessy said Bishop Gumbleton was the highest-ranking official in the church to report having been abused and said his testimony would "enable Catholic lawmakers to understand that these reforms are good medicine for the church despite the seemingly bitter taste in the short term." A native of Detroit, Bishop Gumbleton was ordained in 1956 and was named a bishop in 1968, but he has spent most of his career as a parish priest, for the last 22 years at St. Leo Church near Wayne State University. In the interview, Bishop Gumbleton recalled his ninth-grade spring at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit. He said a priest would take him and other boys to a cottage about 45 minutes northeast of Detroit as a treat on warm days. "At some point he would start to wrestle, he would wrestle you to the floor, like boys would do, then he starts putting his hand down the back of your pants," the bishop recalled. "That's when always made sure I extricated myself and got out. It's embarrassing, because I feel, well, I should have known better. And that's the same thing all of these victims go through."
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