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SOL Reform2013-08-27 19:32:582013-08-30 18:30:17CA Bill would exempt statue of limitations on some sexual abuse suits
CA SB 131 Passes Assembly 44-15! Tell Senators to Vote YES!
/in California /by SOL ReformBILL ANALYSIS Ó ----------------------------------------------------------------- |SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | SB 131| |Office of Senate Floor Analyses | | |1020 N Street, Suite 524 | | |(916) 651-1520 Fax: (916) | | |327-4478 | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- UNFINISHED BUSINESS Bill No: SB 131 Author: Beall (D) and Lara (D), et al. Amended: 6/19/13 Vote: 21 SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE : 5-1, 5/7/13 AYES: Evans, Corbett, Jackson, Leno, Monning NOES: Anderson NO VOTE RECORDED: Walters SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE : 5-1, 5/23/13 AYES: De León, Hill, Lara, Padilla, Steinberg NOES: Walters NO VOTE RECORDED: Gaines SENATE FLOOR : 21-10, 5/29/13 AYES: Beall, Block, Corbett, De León, DeSaulnier, Evans, Hancock, Hernandez, Hill, Jackson, Lara, Leno, Liu, Monning, Pavley, Price, Roth, Steinberg, Torres, Wolk, Wyland NOES: Anderson, Berryhill, Correa, Emmerson, Fuller, Gaines, Huff, Knight, Nielsen, Walters NO VOTE RECORDED: Calderon, Cannella, Galgiani, Hueso, Lieu, Padilla, Wright, Yee, Vacancy ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 44-15, 9/4/13 - See last page for vote SUBJECT : Damages: childhood sexual abuse: statute of limitations SOURCE : National Center for Victims of Crime CONTINUED SB 131 Page 2 DIGEST : This bill provides that the time limits for commencement of an action for recovery of damages suffered as a result of childhood sexual abuse be applied retroactively to any claim that has not been adjudicated to finality on the merits as of January 1, 2014. This bill revives, for a period of one year, a cause of action, as specified, that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations as of January 1, 2014, provided that the plaintiff's 26th birthday was before January 1, 2003, and the plaintiff discovered the cause of his or her injury on or after January 1, 2004. This bill provides that a partyis entitled to conduct discovery before the court may rule on a motion challenging the sufficiency of the plaintiff's showing that a person or entity knew or had reason to know, or was otherwise on notice, of any unlawful sexual conduct and failed to take reasonable steps, and to implement reasonable safeguards, to avoid those acts in the future. This bill specifies that this entitlement does not apply to a cause of action revived pursuant to these provisions. Assembly Amendments make technical changes. ANALYSIS : Existing law: 1. Generally provides that the time for commencing a civil action for damages shall be within two years of the injury or death caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another. (Code of Civil Procedure (CCP) Section 340) 2. Provides that the time for commencing an action based on injuries resulting from childhood sexual abuse, as defined, shall be eight years after the plaintiff reaches majority (i.e., 26 years of age) or within three years of the date the plaintiff discovers or reasonably should have discovered that the psychological injury or illness occurring after the age of majority was caused by the abuse, whichever occurs later. (CCP Section 340.1) 3. Provides that in civil actions, as described above, against persons or entities other than the perpetrator, whose intentional, negligent, or wrongful act was the legal cause of the sex abuse, the plaintiff must show that the person or CONTINUED SB 131 Page 3 entity knew or had reason to know, or was otherwise on notice, of unlawful sexual conduct of an employee or agent, and failed to take reasonable steps, as specified, to avoid acts of unlawful sexual conduct in the future. (CCP Section 340.1) 4. For a period of one year commencing January 1, 2003, existing law revived certain actions that would otherwise be barred solely because the applicable statute of limitations had expired. This bill: 1. Provides that the time limits for commencement of an action for recovery of damages suffered as a result of childhood sexual abuse be applied retroactively to any claim that has not been adjudicated to finality on the merits as of January 1, 2014. 2. Revives, for a period of one year, a cause of action, as specified, that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations as of January 1, 2014, provided that the plaintiff's 26th birthday was before January 1, 2003, and the plaintiff discovered the cause of his or her injury on or after January 1, 2004. 3. Provides that a party is entitled to conduct discovery before the court may rule on a motion challenging the sufficiency of the plaintiff's showing that a person or entity knew or had reason to know, or was otherwise on notice, of any unlawful sexual conduct and failed to take reasonable steps, and to implement reasonable safeguards, to avoid those acts in the future. 4. Specifies that this entitlement does not apply to a cause of action revived pursuant to these provisions. Background Before 1990, claims of childhood sexual abuse were governed by a one year statute of limitations. (CCP Section 340(3).) However, if the cause of action accrued while the plaintiff was a minor, the statute was tolled until he/she became an adult. (CCP Section 352(a).) Thus, any complaint had to be filed CONTINUED SB 131 Page 4 within one year of the plaintiff's 18th birthday. In 1990, the Legislature rewrote the statute of limitations for cases involving adult trauma caused by childhood sexual abuse. (SB 108 (Lockyer), Chapter 1578, Statutes of 1990) That law provides that the time for commencing an action based on injuries resulting from "childhood sexual abuse" shall be eight years after the plaintiff reaches majority (i.e., age 26) or within three years of the date of the plaintiff discovers or reasonably should have discovered that the psychological injury or illness occurring after the age of majority was caused by the abuse, whichever occurs later. As subsequently interpreted by the courts, SB 108 changed the statute of limitations for actions against the perpetrators, but did not change it for actions against other responsible third parties. (See Debbie Reynolds Prof. Rehearsal Studios v. Superior Court (1994) 25 Cal.App.4th 222; Tietge v. Western Province of the Services (1997) 55 Cal.App.4th 382) In 1998, the Legislature responded to this interpretation and enacted AB 1651 (Ortiz, Chapter 1021, Statutes 1998) to apply the extended statute of limitations in actions against third parties. However, any action against any person or entity other than the sexual abuser would have to be commenced before the plaintiff's 26th birthday. (CCP Section 340.1(b).) In 2002, SB 1779 (Burton and Escutia, Chapter 149, Statutes of 2002) was enacted to extend the statute of limitations in cases against a third party who was not the perpetrator of the sexual abuse beyond age 26, when the third party knew or had reason to know of complaints against an employee or agent for unlawful sexual conduct and failed to take reasonable steps to avoid similar unlawful conduct by that employee or agent in the future. SB 1779 also created a one year window in which victims could bring a claim against a third party, when that claim would have otherwise been barred solely because the statute of limitations had expired. Almost 1,000 cases were filed in California during the one year window in 2003. However, between 2005 and 2012, about 50 cases were filed by victims who were over the age of 26 in 2003, but did not make a causal connection between childhood abuse and problems as an adult until after 2003. The Quarry brothers, who filed suit in 2007, were among those who filed one of these cases. The trial court dismissed the case based on their age in CONTINUED SB 131 Page 5 2003 (over 26 years of age), stating that the brothers should have brought their case within the one year window under SB 1779. The First District Court of Appeal reversed the trial court's decision, and held that the one year window only applied to victims who were both over the age of 26 and had made the required causal connection more than three years prior to January 1, 2003. It held that victims like the Quarry brothers were not barred as of January 1, 2003, and could avail themselves of the option of filing a claim within three years from discovery. Ultimately the Quarry case and about 20 others were taken up by the California Supreme Court. (Quarry v. Doe (2009) 53 Cal.4th 945.) The Court held that the Legislature failed to make its retroactive intent in SB 1779 clear, and the rules of statutory construction required that when the Legislature amends a statute of limitations, that amendment is presumed to be prospective, and is retroactive only if the Legislature expressly provides that it is intended to be retroactive and revive previously time-barred claims. The majority found the language of SB 1779 did not satisfy that rule of construction, and must be interpreted prospectively, or limited to the one year window. The dissent disagreed, and invited the Legislature to fix the problem. FISCAL EFFECT : Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: No Local: No SUPPORT : (Verified 9/4/13) National Center for Victims of Crime (source) American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy American Association of University Women Boys and Girls Club - Santa Barbara California Association of Chiefs of Police California Coalition Against Sexual Assaults California Nurses Association Child Abuse Listening Mediation College Democrats at Pacific Union College Consumer Attorneys of California Crime Victims United of California Equality California National Association of Social Workers CONTINUED SB 131 Page 6 National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence National Safe Child Coalition Peace Officers Research Association Protective Parents Association San Diego County District Attorney Santa Clara County District Attorney Waste Less Living, Inc. OPPOSITION : (Verified 9/4/13) California Association of Private School Organizations California Catholic Conference California Council of Nonprofit Organizations California State Alliance of YMCA La Raza Roundtable ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT : According to the author, "Over the last 27 years the California Legislature has come to have a better understanding of the insidious and latent nature of the injuries suffered by a child who has been sexually abused and the reasons why victims of childhood sex abuse often wait years before reporting the abuse to law enforcement or otherwise. California Code of Civil Procedure Section 340.1, a remedial statute intended to provide redress the child sex abuse victims, has been amended no less than five times since its original enactment in 1986, consistent with this evolving knowledge of the latent effects of the original abuse." ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION : The California Catholic Conference (CCC). states, "Although this bill has now been amended several times in the Senate, we remain opposed, because the provision in the bill that would revive time-barred claims of childhood sexual abuse is tailored to provide relief only to a certain class of victims to the exclusion of the vast majority of child abuse victims. Although there have been concepts in the various iterations of the bill that the CCC could support, the current contents are unreasonable and inequitable. If the bill is intended, as its author has claimed, to provide access to justice for the victims of child abuse, it makes utterly no sense to exclude more than 90% of those victims access to the courts, while granting that same right to a precious few." ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 44-15, 9/4/13 CONTINUED SB 131 Page 7 AYES: Allen, Ammiano, Atkins, Bonta, Bradford, Ian Calderon, Chau, Chesbro, Cooley, Dahle, Dickinson, Fong, Fox, Frazier, Gatto, Gomez, Gonzalez, Gordon, Gray, Hall, Roger Hernández, Jones-Sawyer, Levine, Linder, Lowenthal, Mitchell, Morrell, Mullin, Nazarian, Pan, V. Manuel Pérez, Quirk, Quirk-Silva, Rendon, Salas, Skinner, Stone, Ting, Waldron, Weber, Wieckowski, Williams, Yamada, John A. Pérez NOES: Bocanegra, Chávez, Donnelly, Beth Gaines, Grove, Hagman, Harkey, Jones, Mansoor, Medina, Muratsuchi, Nestande, Patterson, Wagner, Wilk NO VOTE RECORDED: Achadjian, Alejo, Bigelow, Bloom, Bonilla, Brown, Buchanan, Campos, Conway, Daly, Eggman, Garcia, Gorell, Holden, Logue, Maienschein, Melendez, Olsen, Perea, Vacancy, Vacancy AL:k 9/5/13 Senate Floor Analyses SUPPORT/OPPOSITION: SEE ABOVE **** END **** CONTINUEDJudge Is Asked by Creditors of Archdiocese to Leave Case (NY Times)
/in Wisconsin /by SOL ReformJudge Is Asked by Creditors of Archdiocese to Leave Case
A federal judge who ruled in favor of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee in bankruptcy proceedings, and against sexual abuse victims and other creditors, is being asked by the creditors to recuse himself because they say he has a conflict of interest.
Judge Rudolph T. Randa ruled in late July that the archdiocese did not have to turn over the millions in its cemetery trust fund to a group of creditors who include hundreds of abuse victims. But lawyers for plaintiffs say the judge has a conflict of interest because many of his family members are buried in archdiocesan cemeteries.
In his ruling, Judge Randa decided that forcing the archdiocese to tap its cemetery fund would violate the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law passed by Congress in 1993.
“For the church and therefore Catholics, cemeteries reflect the Catholic belief in the resurrection of Jesus and the community’s commitment to the corporeal work of mercy of burying the dead,” Judge Randa wrote.
The ruling reversed an earlier decision by a federal bankruptcy judge and was a victory for Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki of Milwaukee, and for his predecessor, CardinalTimothy M. Dolan, now the archbishop of New York, who established the cemetery trust in Milwaukee in 2007.Documents made public in July revealed that when Cardinal Dolan sought the Vatican’s permission to move nearly $57 million into a cemetery trust, he said it would help protect the money from legal claims.
The archdiocese draws on the trust fund to maintain its cemeteries, where about 500,000 people are buried, but it is one of the last large assets available to the survivors of sexual abuse by clergy members in Milwaukee. The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2011 after hundreds of people filed suit.
A lawyer for the team representing the creditors said they discovered only after Judge Randa issued his ruling that at least nine of his relatives, including his parents, sisters and in-laws, are buried in the cemeteries. After obtaining a court order to compel the archdiocese to turn over records, they found that Judge Randa had bought the contract for the care and maintenance of his parents’ burial crypts.
“He is, in effect, a creditor himself,” lawyers for the creditors argued in their memorandum asking for the recusal of Judge Randa, who sits on the Federal District Court in the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
But lawyers for Archbishop Listecki and the cemetery trust argued in a memorandum filed Monday that the move for a recusal is “a thinly disguised attempt to shop for a new district court judge.”
“The personal attack on Judge Randa is astounding,” said Timothy F. Nixon, a lawyer for the cemetery trust, in an interview. “He’s not a creditor in any way, shape or form.”
The creditors have also appealed Judge Randa’s ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. They say that his decision would allow any entity to claim that it could not pay creditors in bankruptcy proceedings because of its First Amendment right to “free exercise” of religion.
“His reasoning would reverse about 75 percent of the free exercise cases out there,” Professor Hamilton said. “That’s why it’s so troubling, and that’s why we are determined to get the decision vacated or at least reversed, because it’s just bad law.”
Prof. Stephen Gillers of New York University School of Law said he could not understand why the creditors would seek both a recusal and an appeal simultaneously, unless they want “to cast doubt on the integrity of the ruling by saying this judge couldn’t look at it with disinterest.”
Professor Gillers said the judge’s monetary interest in the cemetery trust was probably not sufficiently substantial to merit recusal. And he said that the timing would also be in question.
“An appellate court is going to say, if you could learn these facts after the ruling, why couldn’t you do it before the ruling?” Professor Gillers said. “Why all of a sudden did you become interested in whether this judge could sit, other than the fact that you lost. That’s something they have to explain.”
A version of this article appears in print on September 4, 2013, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Judge Is Asked By Creditors Of Archdiocese To Leave Case.
Wrong, wrong, wrong
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformMuslim Rape Gangs Targeting Sikh Children, Says BBC’s Inside Out Documentary
By DOMINIC GOVER : Subscribe to Dominic’s RSS feed | September 2, 2013 4:57 PM GMT
A TV documentary has exposed the grooming of Sikh children for sexual abuse allegedly by mainly Muslim paedophile gangs.
The BBC’s Inside Out will broadcast a 30-minute investigation into the abuse of Sikh girls, following the jailing last week of a grooming gang for a raft of child sex offences.
It follows disquiet among Sikhs in the Midlands over alleged sex crimes against youngsters by organised gangs operating a network of contacts and premises to carry out abuse.
Tensions boiled over earlier this year when a curry restaurant in Leicester was attacked by around 50 men, after a 16-year-old Sikh girl was abused in a flat attached to the property.
Sikh men brandishing clubs and knives attacked the Moghul Durbar restaurant, leaving three people with stab wounds and the premises ransacked. A judge condemned the violence as “mob rule” and “lawless anarchy.”
Six men, including five Muslims, were jailed last week after they were found guilty of operating a sex ring from the property attached to the restaurant.
Sikh anger in Leicester over the issue of exploitation has been fuelled by a perception that police had failed to properly investigate the case.
The Sikh Awareness Society (SAS) said that Sikh families often felt powerless to know how to deal with grooming. At any one time, the group is helping around 15 victims of grooming. More than half of the cases involves street grooming – where a victim is targeted by an organised gang.
Coordinator Jagjir Singh, 31, said: “Sikhs feel like it’s happening and they don’t have the resources to deal with it. Also, the police don’t have the resources to deal with it.”
The SAS identified street grooming as a particular issue within the Pakistani community.
Singh said: “When you are talking about street grooming all the crimes I’ve seen are involving one community. What is the reason for that? These questions needs to be thrown into the open: why are married men going off with a 15-year-old girl?
“When we are dealing with victims it’s important to ask why are they able to get close to a child? It is much easier for an Asian man to get a Sikh girl because they share some elements of culture like Bollywood. Also, there is the fact that we [Pakistanis and Sikhs] are congregated together in particular parts of the country.”
Leicestershire Police denied that January’s attack on the Moghul Durbar restuarant was sparked by a police failure to invesigate allegations against members of the Pakistani community. A police spokesman told IBTimes UK: “Some allegations were brought to us by a representative of the Sikh community late last year and we launched an investigation within 24 hours of that.
“But the 16-year-old involved was not prepared to discuss in detail what her experiences were and it took some time to build up a rapport. The restaurant was attacked on January 14, the victim disclosed details on the 16th and arrests were made three days later.”
Crimes by a small minority of Muslims risk tainting all their fellow worshippers, Ibrahim Mogra told IBTimes UK. “Like in the Holocaust when Jews were picked on, the attacks went up in number because decent people did not do enough to stop them.
“More and more people are expressing their concern and I’m having to assure them and comfort them because of the worry that they have.”
The Sikh Council Uk welcome the documentary. A spokesman said: “The Sikh Council UK has begun dialogue with various authorities to identify and address particular issues of concern to the Sikh community, some of which are historical.
“All authorities should ensure their response is prompt and robust to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice. The Sikh Council UK is disappointed that the response of authorities has often been insufficient in this regard.”
Inside Out’s investigation of the exploitation of Sikh girls is broadcast on BBC One at 7.30pm on Monday September 2nd.
Good development — child-centered
/in Pennsylvania /by SOL ReformNew Philly facility helps victims of child abuse
By Helen Ubinas, Daily News Columnist
POSTED: September 03, 2013
ANTHONY SMITH was 7 when he was lured from his bike and sexually assaulted.
Nearly every day after school, he and his best buddy would finish their homework and chores and then ride their bikes around their South Philadelphia neighborhood until it got dark.
But one day, Smith finished his work early and went to the nearby gas station alone to work on his bike so that he’d be ready to ride when his friend was done.
He was just a few blocks from home, on 25th and Ellsworth streets, when a man he didn’t know seemed to appear out of nowhere. The man, his clothes stained with engine grease, started chatting him up. “You can ride your bike good,” Smith recalls the man saying. “Bet you can’t ride it over here. No way you can ride it over here.” They wound up in a secluded spot in the back of a tractor-trailer.
“He told me that if I did what he asked, he wouldn’t hurt me,” Smith said. As to what happened next, Anthony doesn’t talk about the actual abuse.
“He helped me get dressed and walked away, and I never saw him again.”
Smith, now 48, vowed that he would take the secret to his grave, and when he spiraled into drugs and alcohol to numb his pain, he almost got there.
“I was afraid of breaking my mother’s heart,” he said.
Because Smith was assaulted by a stranger, he isn’t a typical victim of abuse – usually children know their abusers, and are abused over an extended period of time. But the silence Smith kept is very typical.
So is the shame and fear that keep many victims from speaking out. Chris Kirchner, executive director of the Philadelphia Children’s Alliance, said that when Smith was assaulted in 1972, children were often questioned at a police station or at home, sometimes in the very home where the abuser lived. Even as awareness and intervention improved, she said, children were often forced to relive the trauma as they were questioned by multiple agencies in multiple settings over several days.
But not anymore, not in Philadelphia. As of last week, all the city agencies that deal with the 1,600 reports of child sexual abuse each year will be located under one roof. That includes the nonprofit Philadelphia Children’s Alliance, the Police Department’s Special Victims Unit, the Department of Human Services and the District Attorney’s Office.
From the outside, the new Philadelphia Safety Collaborative on Hunting Park Avenue looks like any other government building. But inside, it has been carefully laid out to coordinate investigations, provide forensic interviews, and offer medical and mental-health services for victims and their families. Now, when a victim and caregiver are in one of the facility’s several interview rooms, they just have to walk down the hall for a medical exam or to set up an appointment with a therapist.
“When you have the number of people who have to talk to children who have been abused and who are mandated to investigate, combined with the number of reports in a city like Philadelphia, trying to affect collaboration without being co-located” – in the same place – “was almost like pushing a rock uphill,” Kirchner said. “This changes all of that.”
Smith, who works for the Gift of Life Donor Program, finally broke his silence when his secret began to affect his family relationships. He first told his older sister, who cried and said it explained so much about his isolation. He went to therapy, and quit drinking and taking drugs. And then last October, after a screening of a movie about men surviving childhood sexual abuse, Smith did what was once unthinkable. He shared his story publicly. He’s been sharing his story as often as he can ever since.
“I want people to know that there is a way out of the darkness, that they can regain their power through their voice.”
Email: ubinas@phillynews.com
Phone: 215-854-5943
On Twitter: @NotesFromHel
On Facebook: Helen.Ubinas
Cisko v. Diocese of Steubenville, 123 So.3d 83 (Dist. Ct. of Appeal of Fla., 3d Dist. 2013)
/in Cases (Florida), Florida /by SOL ReformThird District.
Synopsis
Attorneys and Law Firms
Opinion
Parallel Citations
38 Fla. L. Weekly D1902
Footnotes
CA Bill would exempt statue of limitations on some sexual abuse suits
/in California /by SOL ReformBill would exempt statue of limitations on some sexual abuse suits
BY DAVID OLSON
August 20, 2013; 06:28 PM
David Nickell said the repeated sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of a Catholic priest in 1980 still haunts him today.
Nickell, 45, of Riverside, looks back at years of “self-medicating” and drifting from job to job and relationship to relationship and believes at least some of the instability in his life is the result of what he said was sexual abuse he suffered when he was 11 and 12 years old.
“I’ve lost a lot of years,” Nickell said.
Current law does not allow Nickell to pursue legal action against the Diocese of San Bernardino, because the alleged abuse happened so long ago. But a bill now being debated in the state legislature would give Nickell and some other alleged victims one year to file suit, exempting them from the statute of limitations for sexual abuse.
A 2002 law granted a similar one-year window but supporters of the new bill say many victims don’t realize the effects of their abuse until later in life.
Nickell filed suit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino in 2010. But his lawyers said a Los Angeles County superior court judge put the case on hold because it was unclear whether he and others who allegedly endured abuse many years ago had a right to pursue legal action against institutions such as the Catholic Church. The California Supreme Court last year ruled that cases such as Nickell’s could not go forward – leading to the introduction of the bill.
The priest who allegedly molested Nickell, the Rev. Ernest J. Hayes, died in 1990, according to diocesan records.
The diocese declined to comment on Nickell’s allegations – or whether other abuse allegations were made against Hayes – because the matter is in litigation, diocesan spokesman John Andrews said.
A state Assembly committee is scheduled to vote Wednesday, Aug. 21, on the bill. The same committee rejected the bill last week, but seven of the committee’s 17 members abstained or did not vote, prompting sponsor Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, to request another hearing. Six legislators voted yes. The bill earlier passed another Assembly committee and the Senate.
Opponents of the bill say the measure unfairly excludes public institutions from its coverage and opens the door to massive judgments for cases that are decades old.
Assemblyman Eric Linder, R-Corona, who abstained from last week’s committee vote, said the bill is “saying that people on this side of the street can create a heinous crime and people on the other side of the street cannot.”
Catholic dioceses in California have paid $1.2 billion as a result of lawsuits filed when the 2002 law lifted the statute of limitations for one year, said Ned Dolejsi, executive director of the California Catholic Conference, which represents the state’s dioceses and is lobbying against the bill.
“We have been there, done that and paid,” Dolejsi said.
Bishop Gerald Barnes of the Diocese of San Bernardino has talked with several Inland Empire legislators about his opposition to the bill, Andrews said.
Irwin Zalkin, an attorney for Nickell, defended the bill’s wording. He said the Catholic Church has an especially tainted history of dealing with abuse allegations.
“We don’t have the same history with public institutions of secrecy and cover-up and failure to report to law enforcement as we have with private institutions,” Zalkin said.
Nickell said he wasn’t aware of the 2002 law when it passed – and had put memories of what happened “in a closet in my head, and the door was shut.”
He said the memories returned about five years ago, when he saw media coverage of clergy sexual abuse.
“Now that I look back on it, I see my shame and my guilt, and I’m understanding why my life was the way it was,” he said.
Nickell said he was 11 years old when Hayes, of St. Anne’s parish in San Bernardino, began showing an interest in him. St. Anne is now part of the larger Our Lady of Hope parish.
Hayes sometimes took him out of class to spend time with him. They went to the movies. They joked around with each other. Nickell said Hayes hugged him and asked him for kisses on the cheek, sometimes when they were in public. That should have caused employees of the school and parish to become suspicious, Nickell said.
Then came the visits to Hayes’ room, Nickell said. The priest tickled him and asked him to sit on his lap. He gave him backrubs and caresses that increasingly became more sexual, Nickell said as tears welled up in his eyes, his hands shaking.
Looking back, Nickell said, he believes the priest was gaining his trust.
“It was all building up,” he said. “It’s like setting up the calf for the slaughter.”
At least twice the priest had stripped down to his underwear, Nickell recalled. He said he still remembers how Hayes wore garters to hold up his socks and the scent of Old Spice.
One day, Nickell said, Hayes did something to him so terrible that he couldn’t bear to talk about it.
He said he ran out of Hayes’ room crying hysterically – his face red from contact with the priest’s whiskers – to find his mother in the parking lot looking for him because he wasn’t waiting for her outside the church, as planned.
He said his mother took him to the diocesan headquarters that afternoon and after she talked frantically with a secretary, then-Bishop Phillip Straling came out.
Nickell recalled he was sobbing as his mother, visibly angry, told Straling what Hayes had allegedly done to her son.
“He told her, ‘How do you know that it happened?’” Nickell said. “‘Were you there?’”
Straling then noted there were no witnesses, he said.
“‘It’s his word against his word,’” Straling said, according to Nickell.
Nickell said that several years ago, after the memories came back, he and an attorney went to meet with two diocesan officials. The officials agreed to have the diocese pay for counseling but offered no emotional support as they talked to him, he said.
Nickell said the bill will help him and others get justice. But no matter what happens to the legislation, Nickell said he wanted to tell his story publicly.
“I’m just hoping this would help other people to want to come forward and seek help and know they’re not alone,” he said.
Also contributing: Staff writer Jim Miller: jmiller@pe.com. Follow David Olson on Twitter:@DavidOlson11