The Oregonian

Sunday, October 28, 2007

The Portland Archdiocese has lost its mind.

As if determined to prove it has learned nothing from past sins, and those of its priests, the archdiocese is demanding that a new group claiming to be victims of clergy abuse should be compelled to abandon their pseudonyms and go public with their identities.

Only last June, Catholic Archbishop John Vlazny apologized for the burdens carried by "the victims of sexual abuse" and conceded, "By our reluctance to bring light to this great darkness, we as a people have sinned."

The time for penance and reconciliation, apparently, has ended. This legal maneuver is an exasperating move to bully these plaintiffs and intimidate future ones.

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By WILLIAM McCALL
The Associated Press
10/25/2007, 4:20 p.m. PDT

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Six months after a historic bankruptcy settlement between the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland and plaintiffs who said priests abused them, the legal battle has taken a new twist — whether a new plaintiff should be publicly identified.

The archdiocese has challenged a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by a man identified as "John Doe 120," arguing the release of copies of the complaint to journalists in advance of the filing undermines his argument for privacy.

"This calculated, public disclosure, timed to maximize its effectiveness in generating a news story before the Archdiocese could respond to a lawsuit filing, deprives plaintiff of any valid claim about a need for privacy," the archdiocese argued.

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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

ASHBEL S. GREEN

Lawsuit – The Portland archdiocese wants new accusers to reveal their names after alerting the media

A historic bankruptcy settlement reached six months ago did not end the bitterness between the Archdiocese of Portland and those who say they were the victims of clergy sexual abuse.

Federal court documents filed by the archdiocese say that a new group of priest accusers have no right to file lawsuits under pseudonyms after providing the media with advance copies of their claims to try to seek wide exposure of their accusations.

"This calculated, public disclosure, timed to maximize its effectiveness in generating a news story before the archdiocese could respond to a lawsuit filing, deprives plaintiff of any valid claim about a need for privacy," the papers say.

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By Christopher Landau
BBC News
Tuesday, 2 October 2007

The crisis over child sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church has cost the organisation both in terms of levels of public trust and compensation payouts.

When American bishops decided in 2002 to conduct an audit of the scale of the problem, their initiative was given a cautious welcome by survivors of sexual abuse.

But one part of the church was not part of the audit.

Nuns, officially known as "women religious", do not always fall under the authority of their local bishop.

This meant they stood outside the remit of the study, even though there are documented cases where Catholic nuns have committed child sexual abuse.

‘Resistance’

In Portland, Oregon, there are six new lawsuits against the Catholic Church. Two are in relation to accusations made against nuns.

Kelly Clark is a lawyer who specialises in sexual abuse cases in the state.

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The Register Guard
Op-Ed
by Kelly Clark
April 29, 2007

Amidst all the congratulations going around these last days concerning the long-awaited resolution of the Archdiocese Bankruptcy, I have noticed a particular tendency among nearly all involved to want to move on and put the past behind us. At one level, I wholeheartedly agree with those sentiments. It is time for this Archdiocese to heal. As a lawyer who has represented over one hundred individuals with claims against the Catholic Church, including forty-one in this Bankruptcy, I have pledged my assistance to the Archbishop, and to his lawyers, in doing whatever I can do to facilitate that healing. The Archdiocese needs it, the larger faith community needs it and our city and state need it.

At the same time, however, the duty I have to the courageous men and women I have represented requires me to remind the community that, while it is all well and good to say let us move on, it is not that simple for the abuse survivors. Between the long delays of the bankruptcy, the breathtakingly broad gag orders, and the natural tendency of child abuse survivors to stay silent, their voices have not been heard in many, many months. As I have listened over the last fifteen years to the stories of boys and girls now men and women who were abused by priests, teachers, nuns, and others they trusted from a Church they loved, and then as I have heard comments from the community these past days and months, I am reminded that there is still much misunderstanding about the nature of priest sexual abuse and its impact. The people who came forward to name their abuse have struggled too hard, for too long, too courageously, to let any misconceptions about what happened to them go unanswered. The misunderstandings and myths we have often heard about child abuse and its survivors in the past years need to be corrected.

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Thursday, August 2, 2007
Associated Press

Six more sex abuse lawsuits were filed Thursday in federal court against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland, the first complaints since the archdiocese resolved its bankruptcy with a massive settlement in April.

The lawsuits were filed by Portland attorney Kelly Clark, who also represented many of the alleged abuse victims covered by the $75 million settlement. (more…)

Christian News Northwest
July 2007

Protecting the innocent
By JOHN FORTMEYER

Plaintiff alleges sex abuse during his stay there in the 1970s

A Salem man has filed a $5 million lawsuit against the Children’s Farm Home and its parent Trillium Family Services, claiming he was sexually abused as a child there in the late 1970s.

It happens. Even once is too often, but tragically, it happens – and all too frequently. It most certainly breaks the heart of God.

And the staff of this newspaper dreads anytime it must be reported on these pages.

But the days of ignoring that sexual abuse of youths can take place in churches, ministries and Christian schools is over. In the past few years, the number of reports of abuse – whether from recent times or surfacing after many years or even decades – seems to have multiplied greatly.

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Register Guard
June 8, 2007

Church releases sex abuse documents
Billy Bishop
The Archdiocese of Portland has released the first installment of documents concerning priests who sexually abused children, an unprecedented move that church officials hope will help victims heal and be reconciled with the faith.

But lawyers for abuse victims question whether the archdiocese will provide a full accounting of what church leaders knew, when they knew it and what they did or didn’t do to prevent it.

The document release was made unilaterally, without public notice and without any index or guide to help the public understand the content, said Portland lawyer Kelly Clark, who represented more than 100 abuse victims in lawsuits against the archdiocese.

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