![]() Such a scenario emerged in an 11 October 2022 hearing before Grabill over a New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper article on a local Catholic high school chaplain who unbeknown to school officials had previously molested a teen girl. She cites “a cruel, though unintended, irony, the focus is on the wellbeing of the institution that covered up child sex abuse”. Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor, is founder and CEO of ChildUSA, a thinktank promoting reform of laws on child abuse. “Chapter 11, in particular, exists to manage assets for an organization going through difficult times.” “The bankruptcy system was not established with child sex abuse victims in mind,” attorney Marci Hamilton wrote in 2021 as a co-author for a Norton Journal of Bankruptcy Law article. A cruel, though unintended, irony the focus is on the wellbeing of the institution that covered up child sex abuse Marci Hamilton So far, with no end to the bankruptcy in sight, that’s been nothing – for either them or their clients. Plaintiff lawyers such as Richard Trahant, John Denenea and Soren Gisleson, who represent about 80 of the 500 claimants against the church, work on contingency, typically earning between 30% and 40% of what cases finally yield. The Jones Walker attorney Mark Mintz, the leader of the church’s expansive legal team, bills $490 hourly. James Stang of Los Angeles, a veteran bankruptcy attorney, guides the New Orleans creditors’ committee, reportedly billing $800 an hour. In New Orleans, that’s been more than $25m, about half of that to the archdiocese-hired Jones Walker firm. The church pays its lawyers, the bankruptcy counsel and other professional fees. But most documents associated with the many abusers who have never been pursued by authorities are shielded by the bankruptcy court.īankruptcy opens a slow negotiation. One lay deacon died while under indictment. He’s awaiting trial.Ī few other clergymen have been prosecuted. That was months after the Guardian revealed that Hecker confessed in writing to his church superiors more than 20 years earlier that he had sexually molested or harassed multiple children whom he met while working. The FBI has been conducting an investigation for more than a year, though how much information it has obtained is unclear.Ī priest named Lawrence Hecker, 92, was charged and jailed in September. In New Orleans, the Chapter 11 filing has kept most church clergy files secret. “The church wants all the relief bankruptcy affords with advantages commercial debtors don’t have.”Īdditionally, the archdiocese in New Orleans stands as an antithesis to its Santa Fe counterpart in terms of transparency. “You can’t liquidate a non-profit,” Ford added. In bankruptcy court, the ultimate tool that a judge has is “to force a liquidation of assets”, Ford said. Yet, the New Mexico attorney Lisa Ford – who had many clients among the 400 survivors involved in the $128m Santa Fe settlement – said: “I have never felt so powerless as in bankruptcy court.” The church wants all the relief bankruptcy affords with advantages commercial debtors don’t have Lisa Ford The archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the only one among more than 30 organizations of its kind to have gone through Chapter 11 and to release its clerical abuse files publicly as part of a settlement. Most of the files are deemed confidential by the bankruptcy judge, Meredith Grabill, though victims’ attorneys have filed a motion – pending for years – to compel the archdiocese to turn over all those records. The vast majority of those clergy, nuns and laypeople have never been criminally prosecuted. The church has released names of less than a third of more than 300 accused abusers, a disproportionately high number for what is the 41st US diocese in terms of size. The law removed the church’s ability to offer low-ball settlements by arguing those claims are invalid simply for being filed too late, arming survivors with more leverage than they otherwise would have. A 2021 state law opened a “ look-back window” enabling the 500 abuse survivors involved in the church’s bankruptcy case to seek redress without concern for previously existing filing deadlines. The number of people who have gone to bankruptcy court and file abuse-related claims has since eclipsed 500.
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