In a decision likely to affect the access child sex abuse victims in New York will have to civil remedies years after their alleged abuse, a federal appeals court will examine dueling decisions by judges in two recent high-profile child sex abuse lawsuits.
Lawyer Kevin Mulhearn represented plaintiffs in both cases, which were filed long after New York State’s statute of limitations for child sex abuse suits.
In the first case, against Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, Mulhearn persuaded a judge that the school’s cover-up of abuse and the positive statements it made about an abuser were enough to override the state’s statute of limitations.
But Mulhearn lost his second case, a $680 million lawsuit against Yeshiva University, in January of this year, despite using an identical legal strategy.
In both cases Mulhearn argued that each school’s positive statements about the alleged abusers to victims and to the school community were enough to “toll,” or pause, the statute of limitations.
A federal judge in Brooklyn, Frederic Block, ruled in Mulhearn’s favor in the Poly Prep case. He rejected a motion to dismiss the case and, soon after, the school negotiated a settlement with victims.
But a federal judge in Manhattan, John Koeltl, dismissed the Y.U. case on January 29. Koeltl even appeared to suggest that the Poly Prep decision was wrong, describing it in his ruling as “unpersuasive.”
Mulhearn filed an appeal of Koeltl’s decision with the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on February 14. New York State’s statute of limitations has long been the bane of campaigners who say the short window given to abuse victims to file civil or criminal complaints works in favor of perpetrators and the institutions that shield them.
In New York, victims have until the age of 23 to bring civil claims against their abusers and until the age of 21 to bring claims against third parties. Abuse advocates say that in many cases victims are too traumatized to bring a case until they are much older.
Neal Brickman, a Manhattan lawyer who has handled a number of civil sex abuse cases, said that finding a legal reason to pause the statute of limitations in court presents “an incredibly high burden.”
“I think the surprising aspect of the two cases is [Mulhearn] got a judge to buy the tolling argument [in the Poly Prep case],” Brickman said. “Almost unanimously these cases have not allowed a tolling of the statute.”
He added: “My caution to Mr. Mulhearn would be, don’t push the one he lost too hard because he may drag the one he won down with him.” Marci Hamilton, an advocate for nationwide reform of statutes of limitations, said it is “unlikely” the appeals court will rule in Mulhearn’s favor because New York’s courts prefer to leave statute of limitations issues to the legislature.
“I do not expect that these survivors will receive any better treatment in New York than others have until the judicial, the legislative, or the executive branch decide to choose children over powerful men,” said Hamilton, a law professor at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
In recent years there has been a huge push to reform statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse. Data collected by Hamilton indicates that last year, eight states passed legislation extending or lifting criminal or civil statutes of limitations for such cases. This year, bills to do so are pending in California, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa and New York.
Assemblywoman Margaret Markey has tried and failed four times to pass legislation that would relax New York’s filing deadline. Markey said that the federal court decision in the Y.U. case “shows how the current law actually rewards institutions such as such as this one that placed reputation ahead of responsibility.” Markey’s latest bill, would eliminate the criminal and civil statute of limitations on child sexual abuse. It would also open up a one-year window for decades-old civil abuse claims.
Though the legislation is likely to pass in the Assembly later this year, Markey’s bill faces tough opposition in the senate. Her bills have never made it to the senate floor because of opposition from senators who cite objections from the Catholic Church and some ultra-Orthodox organizations that decades-old civil suits are difficult to defend against and could bankrupt their religious institutions.
Judge Koeltl, in his January 29 decision, said: “Statutes of limitations strike a balance between providing a reasonable time for victims to bring their claims while assuring that defendants have a fair opportunity to defend themselves before evidence is lost or memories fade.” Koeltl added: “In this case, the statutes of limitations have expired decades ago, and no exceptions apply.” Mulhearn, who represents 34 men who say they were abused at Yeshiva University’s Manhattan boys high school, said Koeltl’s decision created a “Catch-22” for victims of abuse.
“There’s no way sex abuse victims can get justice if the school decides to conceal and cover-up their own knowledge and complicity,” Mulhearn told the Forward.
Koeltl said that the students, who were abused between 1971 and 1992, knew they were abused, knew who abused them and knew who employed their abusers. They could and should have brought their claims decades ago, he ruled.
But Mulhearn told the Forward that the key issue is that Y.U. staff and board members knew that rabbis George Finkelstein and Macy Gordon were a threat to students. Y.U. not only continued to employ the men, but the Modern Orthodox college covered up complaints and maintained to students and their families that the two rabbis were trustworthy people. That made it impossible for the abuse victims to prove a cover-up until long after the statute of limitations had expired, Mulhearn said.
In court papers filed with the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which covers New York, Vermont and Connecticut, Mulhearn said: “The District Court created a grossly improper and absurd ‘Catch-22’… by requiring Plaintiffs to bring claims against Y.U. and [its high school] of which they neither knew nor — because of Defendants prolonged and successful concealment and cover-up — ought to have known.”
The former students say they only became aware of the cover-up when they read a December 2012 interview with Y.U.’s former president, Rabbi Norman Lamm, in the Forward. Lamm told the Forward that during his tenure, from 1976 to 2003, he quietly dismissed staff members for inappropriate behavior. In a July 2013 retirement letter, Lamm said: “I acted in a way that I thought was correct, but which now seems ill conceived.”
Mulhearn overcame the statute of limitations in the Poly Prep case by arguing that the school deceived students by making positive statements about a football coach, Philip Foglietta, whom administrators knew to be an abuser.
Mulhearn used the same argument in the Y.U. case, pointing out that despite more than 20 separate abuse complaints to Y.U., while students were at the school or after they left, Y.U. continued to represent Finkelstein and Gordon as upstanding rabbis, even creating scholarships in their names.
Koeltl dismissed Mulhearn’s argument. In his ruling, Koeltl said that Y.U.’s positive statements about Finkelstein and Gordon were “passive” and “general” and therefore did not rise to the level of active concealment that might stop the clock on the statute of limitations.
Contact Paul Berger at berger@forward.com or on Twitter [@pdberger](http://www.twitter.com/pdberger
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2014-02-20 00:15:372014-02-20 00:15:37How Y.U. Won $680M Abuse Case on Same Issue Another School Lost
Posted: Feb 19, 2014 4:01 AM ESTUpdated: Feb 19, 2014 10:15 AM EST
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated PressLOS ANGELES (AP) – When Los Angeles police were investigating allegations of child abuse by a Roman Catholic priest in 1988, they asked for a list of altar boys at the last parish where the priest worked.
Archbishop Roger Mahony told a subordinate not to give the list, saying he didn’t want the boys to be scarred by the investigation and that he felt the altar boys were too old to be potential victims, according to a February 2013 deposition made public Wednesday.
The detectives investigating allegations against Nicolas Aguilar Rivera, a visiting Mexican priest, ultimately got the names of the boys from parish families. They determined the priest molested at least 26 boys during his 10 months in Los Angeles, according to the priest’s confidential archdiocese file and police records made public by attorneys for the victims.
Twenty-five of the alleged victims were altar boys and the 26th was training with the priest to be one, said Anthony DeMarco, a plaintiff attorney. It’s not clear what impact Mahony’s action had on the investigation, though at the time police complained that the archdiocese wasn’t fully cooperating.
Mahony’s deposition was obtained by The Associated Press and is part of the evidence included in a settlement of abuse claims against Aguilar Rivera and four other priests. The archdiocese, the nation’s largest, agreed to pay $13 million to 17 victims.
Since 2006, the archdiocese has paid more than $700 million to settle clergy abuse lawsuits by hundreds of victims. Internal church files kept on priests accused of abuse were released last year under court order. They showed that Mahony, who was elevated to cardinal and retired in 2011, maneuvered behind the scenes with his top aide, Monsignor Thomas Curry, to shield molester priests, provide damage control for the church and keep parishioners in the dark.
When the files were released, prosecutors said the cases fell outside the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution of any church officials.
Mahony’s sworn testimony in the case of Aguilar Rivera is significant because it’s the first time he has been questioned under oath about clergy abuse since the confidential church files were released. During past depositions, attorneys haven’t had documents to back up their questions, DeMarco said.
“This time when he’s trying to do the ‘I don’t remember’ routine, I put the document in front of him and said, ‘You wrote this, right?'” he said.
J. Michael Hennigan, an attorney with the archdiocese, said Mahony didn’t reveal a list of altar boys, also called altar servers, to police because he didn’t believe any of the alleged victims were among them. Mahony was in Rome on Wednesday and was not available to comment, Hennigan said.
“My recollection is at the time that memo was written there was no suggestion that altar servers were involved,” the attorney said, adding that Mahony was “very vigorous” in trying to get Aguilar Rivera brought back to the U.S. for prosecution after he fled.
“What I know is there came a time when whatever the police wanted we gave them and it was shortly after this, but I don’t know if the police ever reissued that request,” he said of the list.
Aguilar Rivera was accused in January 1988 by two families who told church officials that he had fondled their children and, in one instance, climbed into bed with a boy after drinking too much during a Christmas celebration at the family’s home.
The priest was told about the complaints by Curry and fled to Mexico before police were notified. He remains a fugitive and is believed to be in Mexico.
Church files released last year show that Mahony ordered Curry to withhold the altar boy list from the LAPD.
In a Jan. 26, 1988, handwritten note on a memo about the police request for a list, Mahony wrote, “We cannot give such a list for no (sic) cause whatsoever.”
In the deposition, Mahony expanded on his reasoning. Allowing police to question altar boys at the two parishes where Aguilar Rivera worked would have created a “negative effect on a large group of altar servers who know nothing about any of this and that was — not a good idea.”
It “could be very traumatic to those servers to all of a sudden be sitting in front of a policeman being interrogated,” the cardinal said. “And we had no suspicion at that time of any other victims and nobody among the altar servers.”
He denied under questioning from plaintiff attorneys that his motivation in holding back the list was to protect the priest and delay the investigation.
Mahony also defended Curry, the vicar for clergy, for telling Aguilar Rivera that the church would need to contact police and that the accused priest was “in a good deal of danger.”
The complaints came in on a Friday and Curry met with the priest on Saturday morning. Police weren’t notified until Monday and Aguilar Rivera was gone.
Mahony also testified about the case of accused priest Peter Garcia, who already was in treatment for alleged sexual abuse when Mahony took over the archdiocese in 1985.
The following year, Mahony wrote to the director of the New Mexico center where Garcia was receiving treatment and warned that the priest couldn’t return to Los Angeles in the foreseeable future. The two alleged victims had switched attorneys, he wrote, and “I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here with the Archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors.”
In his deposition, Mahony said that letter was not intended to keep Garcia safe from prosecution.
“Was I interested in having a big civil upset here for the archdiocese? No, I was not. And — but I was not encouraging him to avoid criminal prosecution,” he said.
“You’ve got to realize, you know, they talk about these states lines. State lines mean nothing,” Mahony added. “I mean this is not a big deal. … He’s not in a country that doesn’t have a — what do they call those? — an extradition treaty. He’s a few hours from here.”
Mahony, who turns 78 later this month, has largely retreated from the public eye since traveling to Rome last year for the papal conclave.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2014-02-19 19:57:312014-02-19 21:47:03Los Angeles bishop kept altar boy list from police
Child sex abuse survivor fights for future victims
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A woman who was molested by her cousin as a teenager is fighting for a law that eliminates the statute of limitations to prosecute people who commit such crimes against teenage children.
Ashley Foster told her story to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, explaining she waited until she was 21 to report the crimes that began when she was 13. By then, it was too late.
Police taped a phone call in which the cousin confessed, but he couldn’t be prosecuted because more than three years had passed by the time Foster found the courage to report them.
The committee unanimously approved a bill that would eliminate the statute of limitations for molesting teenage children. There is no statute of limitation for similar crimes against children younger than 13.
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2014-02-18 22:02:582014-02-18 22:02:58Child sex abuse survivor fights for future victims
Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com)
Georgia lawmakers may lengthen the time child sex abuse victims can take legal actions against the adults who molested them. We hope this bill (H.B. 771) passes. It’s not perfect but it will make kids safer.
Giving child sex abuse victims more time to file civil cases helps to publicly expose those who commit and conceal crimes against kids. Ideally, however, we believe the statute of limitations should be removed entirely and a civil “window” be adopted that enables any victim to expose any predator, no matter how long ago the crimes took place.
When California lawmakers did this, more than 300 predators were exposed, many of whom were still on the job or living among unsuspecting neighbors.
Most victims are unable to come forward for years or even decades. We feel that should be no time limit on when a victim can come forward to get justice for the heinous crime of childhood sexual abuse.
We urge the Georgia legislature to pass H.B. 771. We hope that they will go even further, though, and make Georgia kids much safer by repealing the statute of limitations all together.
(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 25 years and have more than 15,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)
David Clohessy
Executive Director, SNAP
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
7234 Arsenal Street
St. Louis MO 63143 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com
SAVE THE DATE:SNAP annual conference – August 1, 2014 in Chicago
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2014-02-18 20:33:072014-02-18 20:33:07Georgia lawmakers may lengthen the time child sex abuse victims can take legal actions against the adults who molested them.
A bill in the South Dakota legislature that appears intended to give several dozen Native American childhood-sexual-abuse plaintiffs their day in court may do just the opposite. According to several legislators, Senate Bill 130 is supposed to fix problems caused by a 2010 law that retroactively blocked the Native lawsuits against the Catholic Church, which ran the boarding schools where the abuse allegedly took place.
However, others claim the new proposal makes matters worse by reinstating the statute of limitations in effect “on the date the abuse occurred,” according to the bill’s language. For the plaintiffs in question, that was the mid-20th century, when the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse shut the courthouse door three years after the abuse, or one year after the victim turned 18—a birthday that’s long past for them.
SB 130’s final sentence slams the door and locks it, according to attorney Michael Shubeck, of the Law Offices of Gregory Yates, in Rapid City; he and Yates have Native clients whose cases were terminated under the 2010 law. Shubeck noted that in a kind of circular logic, this part of the bill says that if a legislative action (like the 2010 law) killed valid cases, SB 130 would revive them.
But, said Shubeck, the short mid-20th-century statute of limitations that SB 130 puts into play means the lawsuits can never be valid. End of story.
Dr. Barbara Charbonneau-Dahlen read SB 130’s draft language and was also concerned. Charbonneau-Dahlen is Chippewa and filed a suit alleging abuse at St. Paul’s Indian Mission School, in Marty, South Dakota. She e-mailed the South Dakota Legislative Research Council, which had written the bill, saying, “If SB 130 stays as is, we would go back to the 1960 rule, and we would again be denied our day in court.”
Charbonneau-Dahlen contends the bill should be rewritten to make the applicable statute of limitations the one in effect when a lawsuit was filed. For her and other Native plaintiffs, that would be the longer time span South Dakota legislated in 1996, since all their suits were filed after that date. A nursing PhD and scholar, Charbonneau-Dahlen called the 1960s understanding of the psychology of childhood sexual abuse, and the shorter time frame that accompanied it, “antiquated.”
A state official who was close to the situation but authorized to speak only on background, insisted that the draft version of SB 130 did not reinstate the restrictive 1960s statute of limitations, though he said the bill could have been better written. He added that it might be kinder to advise the plaintiffs to forget about their lawsuits.
Here’s the background: In the early 2000s, Charbonneau-Dahlen and scores of other Native Americans, many of them Lakota or Dakota, began filing lawsuits against the Catholic Church and its priests, nuns and other employees under the existing 1996 statute of limitations. The plaintiffs charged they’d been raped, sodomized and otherwise sexually assaulted—often brutally, repeatedly and at very young ages—in South Dakota Church-run boarding schools during the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
In 2010, the legislature passed a law preventing childhood-sexual-abuse plaintiffs over age 40 from collecting damages from an entity such as a school, church or religious order; plaintiffs could only sue individual perpetrators. Almost all the Native Americans suing the Church were over 40.
Until that moment, the Native lawsuits had followed a typical path—briefs, motions and documents were filed with the courts, and alleged perpetrators were deposed, testifying under oath during the discovery, or initial, phases of the lawsuits. Letters between Church officials discussing the abuse were entered into evidence (several are seen herein connection with a recent South Dakota Public Radio story; please be forewarned that they include graphic descriptions of sexual crimes against children). One example from among many was a letter from convicted sodomite Brother Matthew Miles to a former student at St. Joseph’s Indian School, in Chamberlain, South Dakota, apologizing for abusing him.
At that time, attorney Steven Smith, of Chamberlain, was defending the religious order that ran St. Joseph’s—the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart—against about a dozen childhood-sexual-abuse suits. Some had been quietly settled out of court. In 2010, Smith wrote and presented to the legislature House Bill 1104—the measure that would get his client off the hook for the remaining claims. A transcript of the session in which Smith advocated for his bill records a legislative supporter commenting that it “gets Mr. Smith where he wants to be.” Smith explained toThe Huffington Postthat the plaintiffs were “trying to grab the brass ring” and “thinking that’s your ticket out of squalor.”
In March of the following year, a South Dakota circuit court judge relied on the new law to dismiss 18 of the Native American cases, tellingThe Huffington Postthat he felt the law could be applied retroactively, in other words, to lawsuits filed before its existence. More cases were dismissed during 2011.
“Our case was six days from trial when…the court retroactively applied HB 1104,” recalled Dahlen. She and her sisters, who’d sued along with her, appealed to South Dakota’s supreme court, which again denied them the right to be heard, she said.
Father Francis Suttmiller, now deceased, was among scores of church employees, living and dead, named by Native Americans who charged that they’d been sexually abused during the mid-20th century at Church-run boarding schools, including the one where he taught, St. Paul’s Indian Mission, in Marty, South Dakota. (Courtesy Sherwyn Zephier)
Not fair, many from in and outside the state have said. “Right now, the point is not for the legislature to litigate these cases,” said state representative Troy Heinert, Rosebud Sioux. “The point is to pass a bill that will give people their day in court.” The abuse phenomenon is not confined to South Dakota, Heinert noted, but part of a worldwide phenomenon facing the Church.
A “travesty” was how Yates described SB 130. “We now know because of science that it takes most people many years to come to terms with childhood sexual abuse. The statute of limitations proposed in SB 130 gives them only a couple of years to do so and grants church entities immunity in the care of all of our children. If this bill is passed, South Dakota will make it more difficult to protect all its children.”
I cannot possibly convey the swath of destruction that lay in Robert Poandl’s wake. We all create ripple effects in the universe around us. These ripple effects can be negative, positive or something in between. I have no doubt Robert helped many people and did many good works, making positive ripple effects. His family and friends are convinced of his innocence which both he and I know is amazing. It attests to the power of faith and love. How anyone could sit through his trial and not be convinced of his guilt is remarkable; Robert certainly did not react when a jury of his peers found him guilty. The sad fact is his family and friends do not truly know him. No person can completely know the depths of another person but they are not even close to knowing his true nature. Unfortunately, I was exposed to his true nature in August of 1991 and have been in a living hell much of the time since. I was a kind and trusting child from a modest family, but that ended that night. He used my parents’ faith in God and Catholicism against them. They too were blinded by faith and love. He preyed on the weak and the poor. He preyed on children to satisfy his own deviant sexual desires. He dropped a nuclear bomb on my psyche. These negative ripple effects did not stop with me. They do not stop with his victims but are transferred to those around them. The angry child who felt betrayed by his parents and by God raged against those who he saw as his betrayers. He saw the world as one without meaning or God. He could not reconcile an omniscient and omnipotent God who loved him with the reality of being handed over to a servant of this God by his mother and then anally raped and told he had in some way sinned. This child who had prodigious potential both in physical and mental capacities saw a world around him devoid of love and honesty. He saw hypocrisy everywhere he looked. Give all you have to the poor and come follow me juxtaposed to jeweled golden chalices, ornate decorations and tithing. Confess your sins juxtaposed to the systematic protection of pedophiles within the Catholic Church. That which you do to the least of my people that which you do unto me juxtaposed to his rape and his parents’ admiration for the rapist. He used to love hearing his mother hum church hymns after mass but afterwards it felt like shards of glass sticking into his mind; had she known he wondered. He could not stop this cascade of negativity and hatred. He wanted to be loved and accepted but at the same time was furious with those who were supposed to provide this love and protect him. He became a fountain of misplaced rage. He found outlets for these dark and powerful feelings in football and substance abuse. He wrote dark tales and drew demons. He put tape on his helmet and wrote the word pain. He inscribed the word hate on his mouth piece. He was plagued by reoccurring nightmares of the abuse. There was no sanctuary from the mental anguish. It has been said memory says it is so; pride says it cannot be so; eventually memory yields to pride. Unfortunately for me and my family, my memory works too well for this. It is seared into my mind like a hot brand into flesh. Unfortunately for Robert’s victims, early childhood sexual abuse proves this line of logic to be fallacy. In my adolescence and until recently, I was ashamed that I had been raped. No man wants to look his father or brothers in the eyes and tell them how they were abused. People with good intentions have recommended books written by women about rape not understanding my self-image as a man was greatly damaged. I have been to one SNAP meeting and talked to another victim of his named Jeff. The things I heard; I do not know how anyone can let it go and be so positive but I am trying my best. The substance abuse spiraled out of control and in many ways stinted my potential and poisoned my soul. I came very close to blackening my own soul by seeking vengeance against him and I came close to ending my own life when I decided I could not commit cold-blooded, premeditated murder. It takes a special type of person who is twisted and evil to carry out such heinous crimes as murder or rape with such premeditation as I contemplated and he carried out. He has no idea how close I came to killing him. He has no idea what it is like for that impulse to remain. I plotted and planned a murder. I hurt my future wife and mate Lauren; she has undergone undue misdirected anger and undue stress from this process. Robert put hate into my heart.
The angry child is long gone and a jaded man is what remains. I no longer blame my parents or God; it was Robert Poandl who raped a 10 year old boy. My anger was misplaced and transferred to others and myself. My mother is a VERY good person and only made a mistake. My parents stopped being Catholic the day I told them what happened. He robbed them of their faith. They stopped going to church and stopped praying at meals. This priest, Robert Poandl, weakened my family’s faith in people, in God and in Christianity.
One of the many differences between Robert and I is that I see how my actions have affected others and I care. I have taken ownership of it and I will accept the consequences. Whether it was Robert, one of those who believe his lies or a sympathetic Catholic who reported my testimony to the Board of Pharmacy does not matter. By trying to drag me down to hell with him, he sinned in another abhorrent way. His whole life is a lie. He is twisted and turned and evil.
If there is a shred of decency left in him, Robert should come clean to his family and friends. They think he is being unjustly incarcerated and persecuted. I do not want money. I do not want money. I have no cause to lie. My legal transgressions occurred AFTER I made my initial deposition. I will accept what comes to me as a man must. His family and friends will be very angry with him if he reveals his true nature but then they will truly know him and will likely still love him. He is at the end of his rope. The reaper is coming. He should help find his likely numerous unnamed victims. He should repent.
I used to wonder how he justified it. I used to wonder if he was an atheist. He has some form of mental illness; I certainly have posttraumatic stress disorder and I am a recovering drug addict. This negative ripple effect ends here. I am choosing light and I am going forward. I have taken my lumps but he will not drag me down to hell with him. I will get married to Lauren and God willing we will have children. I see in children innocence which needs to be protected and all that is right in the world. He saw potential victims.
But he should not think by repenting this will save his soul. Does he think he can say he is sorry to another priest and all is forgiven? Say 10 hail marries and the slate is wiped clean only to find other victims and destroy more lives. Does the old fool think he can outsmart God?
Matthew 7:21-23 – “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
And now it is time for Robert to reap what he has sewn. There is no ace in the hole to play here; this is not WV. All the pain and punishment that is coming his way is well-deserved. He caused many times this pain through his negative ripple effects and heinous crimes. It is time for justice to finally be served. There is nowhere left for Robert Poandl to hide.
How Y.U. Won $680M Abuse Case on Same Issue Another School Lost
/in New York /by SOL ReformHow Y.U. Won $680M Abuse Case on Same Issue Another School Lost
Appeals Court Unlikely To Allow Statute of Limitations Easing
By Paul Berger
Related Articles
In a decision likely to affect the access child sex abuse victims in New York will have to civil remedies years after their alleged abuse, a federal appeals court will examine dueling decisions by judges in two recent high-profile child sex abuse lawsuits.
Lawyer Kevin Mulhearn represented plaintiffs in both cases, which were filed long after New York State’s statute of limitations for child sex abuse suits.
In the first case, against Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, Mulhearn persuaded a judge that the school’s cover-up of abuse and the positive statements it made about an abuser were enough to override the state’s statute of limitations.
But Mulhearn lost his second case, a $680 million lawsuit against Yeshiva University, in January of this year, despite using an identical legal strategy.
In both cases Mulhearn argued that each school’s positive statements about the alleged abusers to victims and to the school community were enough to “toll,” or pause, the statute of limitations.
A federal judge in Brooklyn, Frederic Block, ruled in Mulhearn’s favor in the Poly Prep case. He rejected a motion to dismiss the case and, soon after, the school negotiated a settlement with victims.
But a federal judge in Manhattan, John Koeltl, dismissed the Y.U. case on January 29. Koeltl even appeared to suggest that the Poly Prep decision was wrong, describing it in his ruling as “unpersuasive.”
Mulhearn filed an appeal of Koeltl’s decision with the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on February 14. New York State’s statute of limitations has long been the bane of campaigners who say the short window given to abuse victims to file civil or criminal complaints works in favor of perpetrators and the institutions that shield them.
In New York, victims have until the age of 23 to bring civil claims against their abusers and until the age of 21 to bring claims against third parties. Abuse advocates say that in many cases victims are too traumatized to bring a case until they are much older.
Neal Brickman, a Manhattan lawyer who has handled a number of civil sex abuse cases, said that finding a legal reason to pause the statute of limitations in court presents “an incredibly high burden.”
“I think the surprising aspect of the two cases is [Mulhearn] got a judge to buy the tolling argument [in the Poly Prep case],” Brickman said. “Almost unanimously these cases have not allowed a tolling of the statute.”
In recent years there has been a huge push to reform statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse. Data collected by Hamilton indicates that last year, eight states passed legislation extending or lifting criminal or civil statutes of limitations for such cases. This year, bills to do so are pending in California, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa and New York.
Assemblywoman Margaret Markey has tried and failed four times to pass legislation that would relax New York’s filing deadline. Markey said that the federal court decision in the Y.U. case “shows how the current law actually rewards institutions such as such as this one that placed reputation ahead of responsibility.” Markey’s latest bill, would eliminate the criminal and civil statute of limitations on child sexual abuse. It would also open up a one-year window for decades-old civil abuse claims.
Though the legislation is likely to pass in the Assembly later this year, Markey’s bill faces tough opposition in the senate. Her bills have never made it to the senate floor because of opposition from senators who cite objections from the Catholic Church and some ultra-Orthodox organizations that decades-old civil suits are difficult to defend against and could bankrupt their religious institutions.
Judge Koeltl, in his January 29 decision, said: “Statutes of limitations strike a balance between providing a reasonable time for victims to bring their claims while assuring that defendants have a fair opportunity to defend themselves before evidence is lost or memories fade.” Koeltl added: “In this case, the statutes of limitations have expired decades ago, and no exceptions apply.” Mulhearn, who represents 34 men who say they were abused at Yeshiva University’s Manhattan boys high school, said Koeltl’s decision created a “Catch-22” for victims of abuse.
“There’s no way sex abuse victims can get justice if the school decides to conceal and cover-up their own knowledge and complicity,” Mulhearn told the Forward.
Koeltl said that the students, who were abused between 1971 and 1992, knew they were abused, knew who abused them and knew who employed their abusers. They could and should have brought their claims decades ago, he ruled.
But Mulhearn told the Forward that the key issue is that Y.U. staff and board members knew that rabbis George Finkelstein and Macy Gordon were a threat to students. Y.U. not only continued to employ the men, but the Modern Orthodox college covered up complaints and maintained to students and their families that the two rabbis were trustworthy people. That made it impossible for the abuse victims to prove a cover-up until long after the statute of limitations had expired, Mulhearn said.
In court papers filed with the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which covers New York, Vermont and Connecticut, Mulhearn said: “The District Court created a grossly improper and absurd ‘Catch-22’… by requiring Plaintiffs to bring claims against Y.U. and [its high school] of which they neither knew nor — because of Defendants prolonged and successful concealment and cover-up — ought to have known.”
The former students say they only became aware of the cover-up when they read a December 2012 interview with Y.U.’s former president, Rabbi Norman Lamm, in the Forward. Lamm told the Forward that during his tenure, from 1976 to 2003, he quietly dismissed staff members for inappropriate behavior. In a July 2013 retirement letter, Lamm said: “I acted in a way that I thought was correct, but which now seems ill conceived.”
Mulhearn overcame the statute of limitations in the Poly Prep case by arguing that the school deceived students by making positive statements about a football coach, Philip Foglietta, whom administrators knew to be an abuser.
Mulhearn used the same argument in the Y.U. case, pointing out that despite more than 20 separate abuse complaints to Y.U., while students were at the school or after they left, Y.U. continued to represent Finkelstein and Gordon as upstanding rabbis, even creating scholarships in their names.
Koeltl dismissed Mulhearn’s argument. In his ruling, Koeltl said that Y.U.’s positive statements about Finkelstein and Gordon were “passive” and “general” and therefore did not rise to the level of active concealment that might stop the clock on the statute of limitations.
Contact Paul Berger at berger@forward.com or on Twitter [@pdberger](http://www.twitter.com/pdberger
Los Angeles bishop kept altar boy list from police
/in California /by SOL ReformImagine what the other bishops in states where there was no window or SOL reform have hiding in their files!
—–
Posted: Feb 19, 2014 4:01 AM ESTUpdated: Feb 19, 2014 10:15 AM EST
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated PressLOS ANGELES (AP) – When Los Angeles police were investigating allegations of child abuse by a Roman Catholic priest in 1988, they asked for a list of altar boys at the last parish where the priest worked.
Archbishop Roger Mahony told a subordinate not to give the list, saying he didn’t want the boys to be scarred by the investigation and that he felt the altar boys were too old to be potential victims, according to a February 2013 deposition made public Wednesday.
The detectives investigating allegations against Nicolas Aguilar Rivera, a visiting Mexican priest, ultimately got the names of the boys from parish families. They determined the priest molested at least 26 boys during his 10 months in Los Angeles, according to the priest’s confidential archdiocese file and police records made public by attorneys for the victims.
Twenty-five of the alleged victims were altar boys and the 26th was training with the priest to be one, said Anthony DeMarco, a plaintiff attorney. It’s not clear what impact Mahony’s action had on the investigation, though at the time police complained that the archdiocese wasn’t fully cooperating.
Mahony’s deposition was obtained by The Associated Press and is part of the evidence included in a settlement of abuse claims against Aguilar Rivera and four other priests. The archdiocese, the nation’s largest, agreed to pay $13 million to 17 victims.
Since 2006, the archdiocese has paid more than $700 million to settle clergy abuse lawsuits by hundreds of victims. Internal church files kept on priests accused of abuse were released last year under court order. They showed that Mahony, who was elevated to cardinal and retired in 2011, maneuvered behind the scenes with his top aide, Monsignor Thomas Curry, to shield molester priests, provide damage control for the church and keep parishioners in the dark.
When the files were released, prosecutors said the cases fell outside the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution of any church officials.
Mahony’s sworn testimony in the case of Aguilar Rivera is significant because it’s the first time he has been questioned under oath about clergy abuse since the confidential church files were released. During past depositions, attorneys haven’t had documents to back up their questions, DeMarco said.
“This time when he’s trying to do the ‘I don’t remember’ routine, I put the document in front of him and said, ‘You wrote this, right?'” he said.
J. Michael Hennigan, an attorney with the archdiocese, said Mahony didn’t reveal a list of altar boys, also called altar servers, to police because he didn’t believe any of the alleged victims were among them. Mahony was in Rome on Wednesday and was not available to comment, Hennigan said.
“My recollection is at the time that memo was written there was no suggestion that altar servers were involved,” the attorney said, adding that Mahony was “very vigorous” in trying to get Aguilar Rivera brought back to the U.S. for prosecution after he fled.
“What I know is there came a time when whatever the police wanted we gave them and it was shortly after this, but I don’t know if the police ever reissued that request,” he said of the list.
Aguilar Rivera was accused in January 1988 by two families who told church officials that he had fondled their children and, in one instance, climbed into bed with a boy after drinking too much during a Christmas celebration at the family’s home.
The priest was told about the complaints by Curry and fled to Mexico before police were notified. He remains a fugitive and is believed to be in Mexico.
Church files released last year show that Mahony ordered Curry to withhold the altar boy list from the LAPD.
In a Jan. 26, 1988, handwritten note on a memo about the police request for a list, Mahony wrote, “We cannot give such a list for no (sic) cause whatsoever.”
In the deposition, Mahony expanded on his reasoning. Allowing police to question altar boys at the two parishes where Aguilar Rivera worked would have created a “negative effect on a large group of altar servers who know nothing about any of this and that was — not a good idea.”
It “could be very traumatic to those servers to all of a sudden be sitting in front of a policeman being interrogated,” the cardinal said. “And we had no suspicion at that time of any other victims and nobody among the altar servers.”
He denied under questioning from plaintiff attorneys that his motivation in holding back the list was to protect the priest and delay the investigation.
Mahony also defended Curry, the vicar for clergy, for telling Aguilar Rivera that the church would need to contact police and that the accused priest was “in a good deal of danger.”
The complaints came in on a Friday and Curry met with the priest on Saturday morning. Police weren’t notified until Monday and Aguilar Rivera was gone.
Mahony also testified about the case of accused priest Peter Garcia, who already was in treatment for alleged sexual abuse when Mahony took over the archdiocese in 1985.
The following year, Mahony wrote to the director of the New Mexico center where Garcia was receiving treatment and warned that the priest couldn’t return to Los Angeles in the foreseeable future. The two alleged victims had switched attorneys, he wrote, and “I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here with the Archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors.”
In his deposition, Mahony said that letter was not intended to keep Garcia safe from prosecution.
“Was I interested in having a big civil upset here for the archdiocese? No, I was not. And — but I was not encouraging him to avoid criminal prosecution,” he said.
“You’ve got to realize, you know, they talk about these states lines. State lines mean nothing,” Mahony added. “I mean this is not a big deal. … He’s not in a country that doesn’t have a — what do they call those? — an extradition treaty. He’s a few hours from here.”
Mahony, who turns 78 later this month, has largely retreated from the public eye since traveling to Rome last year for the papal conclave.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Child sex abuse survivor fights for future victims
/in Florida /by SOL ReformChild sex abuse survivor fights for future victims
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A woman who was molested by her cousin as a teenager is fighting for a law that eliminates the statute of limitations to prosecute people who commit such crimes against teenage children.
Ashley Foster told her story to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, explaining she waited until she was 21 to report the crimes that began when she was 13. By then, it was too late.
Police taped a phone call in which the cousin confessed, but he couldn’t be prosecuted because more than three years had passed by the time Foster found the courage to report them.
The committee unanimously approved a bill that would eliminate the statute of limitations for molesting teenage children. There is no statute of limitation for similar crimes against children younger than 13.
Georgia lawmakers may lengthen the time child sex abuse victims can take legal actions against the adults who molested them.
/in Georgia /by SOL ReformExecutive Director, SNAP
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
7234 Arsenal Street
St. Louis MO 63143
314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com
SAVE THE DATE:SNAP annual conference – August 1, 2014 in Chicago
Are Pedophiles Getting Free Pass in South Dakota?
/in South Dakota /by SOL ReformProfessor Marci A. Hamilton: “More sickness in SD. Open courthouses to these victims!”
Are Pedophiles Getting Free Pass in South Dakota?
indiancountrytodaymedianetwork
A bill in the South Dakota legislature that appears intended to give several dozen Native American childhood-sexual-abuse plaintiffs their day in court may do just the opposite. According to several legislators, Senate Bill 130 is supposed to fix problems caused by a 2010 law that retroactively blocked the Native lawsuits against the Catholic Church, which ran the boarding schools where the abuse allegedly took place.
However, others claim the new proposal makes matters worse by reinstating the statute of limitations in effect “on the date the abuse occurred,” according to the bill’s language. For the plaintiffs in question, that was the mid-20th century, when the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse shut the courthouse door three years after the abuse, or one year after the victim turned 18—a birthday that’s long past for them.
SB 130’s final sentence slams the door and locks it, according to attorney Michael Shubeck, of the Law Offices of Gregory Yates, in Rapid City; he and Yates have Native clients whose cases were terminated under the 2010 law. Shubeck noted that in a kind of circular logic, this part of the bill says that if a legislative action (like the 2010 law) killed valid cases, SB 130 would revive them.
But, said Shubeck, the short mid-20th-century statute of limitations that SB 130 puts into play means the lawsuits can never be valid. End of story.
Dr. Barbara Charbonneau-Dahlen read SB 130’s draft language and was also concerned. Charbonneau-Dahlen is Chippewa and filed a suit alleging abuse at St. Paul’s Indian Mission School, in Marty, South Dakota. She e-mailed the South Dakota Legislative Research Council, which had written the bill, saying, “If SB 130 stays as is, we would go back to the 1960 rule, and we would again be denied our day in court.”
Charbonneau-Dahlen contends the bill should be rewritten to make the applicable statute of limitations the one in effect when a lawsuit was filed. For her and other Native plaintiffs, that would be the longer time span South Dakota legislated in 1996, since all their suits were filed after that date. A nursing PhD and scholar, Charbonneau-Dahlen called the 1960s understanding of the psychology of childhood sexual abuse, and the shorter time frame that accompanied it, “antiquated.”
A state official who was close to the situation but authorized to speak only on background, insisted that the draft version of SB 130 did not reinstate the restrictive 1960s statute of limitations, though he said the bill could have been better written. He added that it might be kinder to advise the plaintiffs to forget about their lawsuits.
Here’s the background: In the early 2000s, Charbonneau-Dahlen and scores of other Native Americans, many of them Lakota or Dakota, began filing lawsuits against the Catholic Church and its priests, nuns and other employees under the existing 1996 statute of limitations. The plaintiffs charged they’d been raped, sodomized and otherwise sexually assaulted—often brutally, repeatedly and at very young ages—in South Dakota Church-run boarding schools during the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
In 2010, the legislature passed a law preventing childhood-sexual-abuse plaintiffs over age 40 from collecting damages from an entity such as a school, church or religious order; plaintiffs could only sue individual perpetrators. Almost all the Native Americans suing the Church were over 40.
Until that moment, the Native lawsuits had followed a typical path—briefs, motions and documents were filed with the courts, and alleged perpetrators were deposed, testifying under oath during the discovery, or initial, phases of the lawsuits. Letters between Church officials discussing the abuse were entered into evidence (several are seen herein connection with a recent South Dakota Public Radio story; please be forewarned that they include graphic descriptions of sexual crimes against children). One example from among many was a letter from convicted sodomite Brother Matthew Miles to a former student at St. Joseph’s Indian School, in Chamberlain, South Dakota, apologizing for abusing him.
At that time, attorney Steven Smith, of Chamberlain, was defending the religious order that ran St. Joseph’s—the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart—against about a dozen childhood-sexual-abuse suits. Some had been quietly settled out of court. In 2010, Smith wrote and presented to the legislature House Bill 1104—the measure that would get his client off the hook for the remaining claims. A transcript of the session in which Smith advocated for his bill records a legislative supporter commenting that it “gets Mr. Smith where he wants to be.” Smith explained toThe Huffington Postthat the plaintiffs were “trying to grab the brass ring” and “thinking that’s your ticket out of squalor.”
In March of the following year, a South Dakota circuit court judge relied on the new law to dismiss 18 of the Native American cases, tellingThe Huffington Postthat he felt the law could be applied retroactively, in other words, to lawsuits filed before its existence. More cases were dismissed during 2011.
“Our case was six days from trial when…the court retroactively applied HB 1104,” recalled Dahlen. She and her sisters, who’d sued along with her, appealed to South Dakota’s supreme court, which again denied them the right to be heard, she said.
Not fair, many from in and outside the state have said. “Right now, the point is not for the legislature to litigate these cases,” said state representative Troy Heinert, Rosebud Sioux. “The point is to pass a bill that will give people their day in court.” The abuse phenomenon is not confined to South Dakota, Heinert noted, but part of a worldwide phenomenon facing the Church.
A “travesty” was how Yates described SB 130. “We now know because of science that it takes most people many years to come to terms with childhood sexual abuse. The statute of limitations proposed in SB 130 gives them only a couple of years to do so and grants church entities immunity in the care of all of our children. If this bill is passed, South Dakota will make it more difficult to protect all its children.”
At press time, SB 130 was slated to have its first public airing on February 18, during aSouth Dakota senate judiciary committee meeting.
Read more athttp://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/02/17/south-dakota-about-give-some-childhood-sex-abuse-free-pass-153600?page=0%2C1 Read more athttp://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/02/17/south-dakota-about-give-some-childhood-sex-abuse-free-pass-153600?page=0%2C0Survivor’s moving victim impact statement. Must read!
/in Ohio /by SOL ReformView news coverage Regarding Poandl: CINCINNATI (AP) — An Ohio priest took a 10-year-old boy to West Virginia for sex more than two decades ago and raped him there, later praying with the boy for forgiveness, a federal prosecutor told jurors Monday.
Victim Impact Statement