Court Ruling affects WT

by James Free 1 Replies latest jw friends

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  James Free

  LOS ANGELES, April 17 — The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest in the nation, lost a four-year legal fight Monday to keep private the files of two priests accused of molesting children.

  The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case, meaning that Cardinal Roger Mahony will have to hand over to Los Angeles prosecutors the records of all communications regarding the two priests.
  
  The Los Angeles archdiocese has fought one of the most vigorous battle in the United States to prevent the files of priests accused of abuse from being made public.
  
  The Survivor's Network of those Abused by Priests criticized Mahony's tactics, saying Monday he had ''spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, donated by generous Catholics, on far-fetched and increasingly unsuccessful legal maneuvers to keep hidden the secrets about abusive priests and complicit bishops.''
  
  The abuse scandal erupted in Boston in 2002 and spread to almost every Catholic diocese in the nation. Scores of dioceses have already released personal files of implicated priests and many have reached multimillion dollar settlements with victims.
  
  Monday's ruling effectively upheld a lower court order that 14 documents in the files of two priests should be made available to a Los Angeles grand jury.
  
  It also paved the way for the release of confidential records sought by more than 500 people who have brought civil lawsuits against the archdiocese. By some estimates, the Los Angeles archdiocese could face a possible total settlement of $1 billion.
  
  The archdiocese said in a statement that Monday's decision was ''disappointing,'' noting that it was working on efforts to settle civil cases through mediation.
  
  In a statement, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley said the ruling was ''a decisive victory'' for local victims of clerical abuse.
  
  'The U.S. Supreme Court's denial to review this matter establishes an important principle that evidence of criminality be made available to appropriate authorities,' Cooley said.

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  This case has major ramifications for the WT Org., which has always refused to release papers related to Judicial Committees to the authorities unless directly compelled to by law. This policy has resulted in accusations of cover-ups, especially in relation to child abuse cases. The new established principle is that evidence of criminality must be made available to the appropriate authorities, and religions cannot claim a confidentiality exemption.
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  Oroborus21

  Howdy,

  Ms. Norris would probably be the expert in the forum to tell us whether this ruling (if applied in other jurisdictions) would have any real impact.

  My opinion is that any records in congregation files or at the WT were probably discoverable and this ruling just seems to confirm my hunch that a court will not allow an ecclesiastical barrier around evidence of guilt in such cases.

  HOWEVER, I have to say that I don't think this is going to be in any significant way impactful upon the Society because the types of personal files kept by these Catholic Priests or records of transfers, investigtions etc. kept by the Arch Diocese are probably nothing like what might be kept either in a congregation file or at Bethel.

  Bethel/the Society typically uses forms and whatever brief summary of the wrong doing (i.e. the Secretary's or the Elders doing the JC or "investigation") notes might contain in them is probably going to be scanty at best. If there are even any records to be obtained. In most matters such records would probably be moot as the circumstance will probably already be known or even admitted to by the guilty person (abuser). In other words, in the case of Witnesses, the culpability in the cases that I have seen has been in the fact that the Society has known about molestation instances and either counseled against reporting or failed to report (when there was a lawful duty to do so) or in some cases permitted the abuser to continue to serve in a responsible position (some sort of negligence theory).

  I don't think there are too many (if not any) "smoking guns" to be found where the (Society or local congregation Elders) are say denying knowledge of the abuse but that their records or notes would show that they actually did know. This seems to be in stark contrast to the pedophile and abuse cases within the Catholic Church which in some (many?) instances show there was a policy or wide-spread practice to cover-up and deny such instances.

  In the case of the Witnesses, the fault has been not in cover-up attempts but in incompentence and past bad policies.

  -Eduardo