The Catholic Church disclosed Monday that it has paid $5.2 million and made significant changes in the way it handles allegations of sexual abuse to settle a lawsuit alleging that a prominent Orange County priest and onetime high school principal molested one of his students. [...] Under the new guidelines, the dioceses have agreed to create an independent victim assistance program for youths who say they have been molested. Orange County Superior Court Judge James Gray also ordered the dioceses to issue public apologies to DiMaria and four other teenage boys who claimed Msgr. Michael A. Harris molested them. [...] Church officials continued to deny a central charge contained in the DiMaria lawsuit: That the dioceses were aware of sex allegations while Harris was principal of Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, an Orange County social and athletic powerhouse, but still picked the priest in 1987 to head their new showcase Santa Margarita High School in southern Orange County. [...] The 11 changes to church procedures provided for in the settlement--which Ryan DiMaria's attorney dubbed "Ryan's Law"--include monitoring of schools and parishes, establishing a toll-free phone number and Web site for anonymous abuse complaints and forbidding priests to be alone in social settings with minors. Some of the rules are new, others reinforce existing regulations. The church also agreed to allow an independent group to regularly interview departing students about possible sexual misconduct at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, from which Harris graduated in 1972.
You know, when I first heard about the settlement in a report with few preliminary details, I wondered what on earth could have gone on. There had to have been some unusually egregious misbehavior alleged -- other than one man molesting one student, I mean -- for the Church to have capitulated so.
I dare say that transferring an accused child molester to another high school would constitute such unusually egregious misbehaviour, yes.
Thing is, this is the sort of case that would have been won on emotion and hearsay. There's certainly no evidence at this late date that the boy was molested; he didn't report it at the time. That's why there were no criminal charges; there wasn't enough evidence to sustain them. As a matter of the evidence, even with the lesser standard of proof in civil cases, it should have been a slam-dunk win for the Church. But that, of course, isn't the way that civil cases work, quite. It certainly isn't the way it works when the organization has a vivid and quite recent history of such charges being laid against it; people are predisposed to believe the accusers before evidence is even heard.
The other part of it is that personnel procedures, especially when part of a lawsuit, aren't protected by privilege. The Church would have been forced to disclose under oath whether or not it knew of allegations against that priest before they transferred him, and if they had known, a true Pandora's box of allegations would have come forth. The Church would almost certainly have been asked how many people they had done such things with, how many priests had been transferred away from posts where they had gotten into such difficulties and been sent directly to a similar one in another area. The Church could, of course, legitimately refuse to answer such questions as both a matter of confidential personnel issues and because the accusations had not (or had not yet) been formally made or proven ... and wouldn't that have set the cat among the media pigeons? If they flatly stated that they had not done so, they would likely have been forced to reveal details of administrative punishments at least to the judge and attorneys to prove the truth of their words. It was truly a no-win situation from their point of view.
I would imagine that this settlement will, indeed, erode morale among priests; how could it not? Surely most of them aren't guilty of any such conduct, but people in the area will be more reluctant to trust them. And the anonymous complaint line and site, as structured, are utterly absurd; to be able to bring such a charge against someone in complete anonymity is, if nothing else, surely unconstitutional. (The Church may be exempt from many employment laws, as a religious organization, but the priests as citizens and residents of the US, are still entitled to be treated as such.) The rigors of the priesthood have already led to unprecedented attrition and recruitment difficulties -- poverty, chastity and obedience not being anyone's strong suits these days. Add to that the concept that someone might choose to accuse you of crimes just because they didn't like you or what you had said, and that they could do it anonymously ... well, what sane person WOULD want to be a priest under those conditions?
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
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