Hiding Behind "Religious Freedom" - "The Educational System At Risk!"

Every Story Under The Sun - But The Truth!

Too Jewish! --- The identical lying distortions used by the Agudath Israel of America and their lackeys. This is about protecting their assets/real estate/business, nothing more! They have all demonstrated time and again, your children's safety mean nothing to them. Prayers and classroom teaching need not be held in privately held multi-million dollar edifices - renting space is not only plausible, but would greatly reduce tuitions.  The Jewish and Catholic people have shown themselves to be weak-kneed and plain dumb.

Catholic Church lobbies to avert sex abuse lawsuits

SB 131 would give some victims of sexual abuse more time to file suit against employers. But church officials argue the bill opens it up to suits that are too old to fight.

At the height of the clergy sex-abuse scandal in 2002, Catholic leaders stayed silent as California lawmakers passed a landmark bill that gave hundreds of accusers extra time to file civil lawsuits. The consequences were costly.

California dioceses paid $1.2 billion in settlements and released thousands of confidential documents that showed their leaders, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, had made plans to shield admitted molesters from law enforcement.

Now, state legislators are considering a bill that would give some alleged victims more time to sue. But this time, the church is waging a pitched battle in Sacramento to quash it.

A group affiliated with the church has hired five lobbying firms and spent tens of thousands of dollars fighting SB 131. Opponents argue that the bill unfairly opens the church, the Boy Scouts, and other private and nonprofit employers to lawsuits over decades-old allegations that are tough to fight in court. Two bishops have visited the Capitol to argue their case to the bill's chief author.

In the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the campaign extends to the very top. Archbishop Jose H. Gomez warned parishioners last month in the church newspaper that the proposal "puts the social services and educational work of the Church at risk" and urged them to press their lawmakers to scuttle it.

The church, Gomez said, "faces deep challenges from the government" and cited the proposal as an example without explaining what it would do. "Let's pray for our religious freedom … and let's exercise that freedom by contacting our legislators about SB 131," he wrote.

The current battle has roots in 2002, when lawmakers were searching for a way to respond to the unfolding clergy scandal. At the time, California's civil statute of limitations — or the time limit for plaintiffs to file lawsuits — was relatively strict for child sex-abuse claims.

Plaintiffs could sue alleged abusers or their employers until age 26. After that, they could sue within three years of finding links between past molestation and present psychological problems, but they could no longer sue employers who may have failed to protect them from known molesters.

The 2002 bill extended the three-year discovery rule to employers and lifted the statute of limitations on lawsuits against them for all of 2003, allowing a slew of claims related to decades-old abuse. Church leaders didn't mount a campaign against the bill. They didn't testify at hearings. They didn't write a single letter in opposition. The legislation zipped through both chambers of the Legislature — not one lawmaker voted against it.

"At the time it didn't seem like too unfair of a response to the sexual abuse of children," said Edward Dolejsi, executive director of the California Catholic Conference, the church's political arm. "I don't think anybody anticipated the exposure that would be there."

In 2007, the L.A. Archdiocese alone settled with more than 500 plaintiffs for $660 million. Church officials were also forced to make public a trove of confidential papers in January of this year. In an acknowledgment that the documents had sullied the church's reputation, archdiocese attorneys tried this year to get upcoming sex-abuse trials moved to another part of the state, saying the media firestorm had tainted the Southern California jury pool.

Since the California law took effect, lawmakers in other states have introduced similar bills, arguing that civil lawsuits are a key way for abuse victims to seek justice. But only three states — Delaware, Hawaii and Minnesota — have passed such laws, said Marci Hamilton, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York and an expert on child sex-abuse statues of limitation.

That's partly because of the Catholic Church's opposition efforts, she said, which have included hiring lobbyists and dispatching bishops to try to sway legislators. "The 2002 bill caught the church off-guard," said Hamilton, who supports lengthening the time child sex-abuse victims have to sue. "Now the Catholic bishops are bringing their A-game to California."......

READ MORE: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-church-bill-20130715,0,5709596.story