Regarding legal action against being disfellowshipped, it is almost impossible to win a court case. Politics and Law do not want to get involved with "spiritual" matters and prefer to allow religions to do their own thing in this regard.
I like JWFacts' post. I'm highlighting this particular paragraph because it helps introduce my comment.
I think Politics is more reluctant to deal with religions than Law is. The reason is, religions do play political roles. No one would like to appear as the persecutor of the faith.
And then, save for a few cases, where Politics does mess with religion the reason tends to be Politics, not human rights or justice, which, as Band says, is not the same as Law. An easy example would be the way that European communists messed with all the religions they had in their lands, and the payback they took with John Paul II.
Not personally, but I have known of one case of a priest who actually abused children but was not prosecuted until it was convenient to do so. And then, the priest in question was right to say it was persecution, rather than prosecution, even if abuse had actually happened.
In my opinion, there is a real tragedy in the fact that self-called "higher interests" keep people not just from receiving or demanding justice, but from even understanding that no religious leader can claim authority to abuse what he calls "his" flock. This should be very easy to see. It should be very easy to understand that abuse is abuse no matter who did it, and that prosecuting a religious leader does not necessarily mean persecuting the faith. It should be a matter of justice, period.
The faithful should also have no problem understanding that religious hierarchs are not authorities in this world. If anything, they are "authorities" in their field of interest, just as a small child with an unusual interest in butterflies could grow to be the leading "authority" in Hymenoptera. I hope the nuance in the word "authority" is clear. I wouldn't take orders from a man who could tell me why "Butterflius wonderfulius" is different from "Butterflius amazingus".
I think Band on the Run is correct in saying that law is not the same as justice, and procedures do not exist for every form of abuse. But not taking religious hierarchs to be worthy of submission for that simple fact would prevent much abuse. I think taking money from an unsuspecting member of the herd is reprehensible as well, if not in court, out of it (and, just to be clear, I don't mean killing the man or cutting his you know what).
Many countries have had strong intellectuals who have had a look at their history and have understood that religious power has to be kept in check as well. Religious power tends to corrupt, and absolute religious power corrupts absolutely. This should also be easy to understand for religious authorities as well.
I understand all the treasures in the Vatican have no monetary value. The Catholic Church has taken the legal steps of the case to make it impossible for any one pope to sell all the great things the Vatican holds. If this church was able to understand that someone could be tempted, and took the steps to preventing it, why shouldn't all churches understand that they should also take steps to limit their own ability to inflict pain, so that no fanatic takes the church too far? And this shouldn't come from external pressure, but from their own wish to do no harm.
