U.S. Supreme Court Tells Mahoney “No”
Roger the Dodger Can’t Conceal Pervert Records
On Easter Monday, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal sought by Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney. For four years, and at untold hundreds of thousands of dollars of Church money, Mahoney has fought a subpoena from a Los Angeles grand jury to turn over personnel records on two defrocked priests accused of molesting minors.
Mahoney’s argument that the records were protected under both the priest-penitent and psychotherapist-patient privileges had already been rejected by a California appellate court. It is claimed that Mahoney was one of the bishops who regularly engaged in musical parishes with priests he knew to be molesting children and generally kept the information secret from the new parish where they were sent.
Lawyers for victims of clergy sexual abuse say the ruling will help them obtain records to support their 560-plus civil lawsuits against the archdiocese. Additionally, archdiocesan lawyers will be precluded from raising the same defense in future criminal trials.
It all goes to show just how much Roger really cared about the victims. Rather than admitting fault and letting them get on with their lives with a monetary settlement for the childhood innocence that was stolen from them, he let the attorneys run up the bill for four years and sent a message to potential jurors to be equally unempathetic with their verdicts.
Roger the Dodger Can’t Conceal Pervert Records
On Easter Monday, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal sought by Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney. For four years, and at untold hundreds of thousands of dollars of Church money, Mahoney has fought a subpoena from a Los Angeles grand jury to turn over personnel records on two defrocked priests accused of molesting minors.
Mahoney’s argument that the records were protected under both the priest-penitent and psychotherapist-patient privileges had already been rejected by a California appellate court. It is claimed that Mahoney was one of the bishops who regularly engaged in musical parishes with priests he knew to be molesting children and generally kept the information secret from the new parish where they were sent.
Lawyers for victims of clergy sexual abuse say the ruling will help them obtain records to support their 560-plus civil lawsuits against the archdiocese. Additionally, archdiocesan lawyers will be precluded from raising the same defense in future criminal trials.
It all goes to show just how much Roger really cared about the victims. Rather than admitting fault and letting them get on with their lives with a monetary settlement for the childhood innocence that was stolen from them, he let the attorneys run up the bill for four years and sent a message to potential jurors to be equally unempathetic with their verdicts.
posted by Anonymous at
8:28 PM
3 Comments:
But don't forget FAB, they keep telling us that this is The Springtime of The Church.
Laughable, ain't it?
As a lawyer, I scratched my head over the invocations of privilege. Yeah, sure, California does have the priest-penitent privilege, but, like the attorney-client privilege, bring a third party into the mix and the privilege is considered waived - plus, ain't no way a personnel record can fall under the privilege. In the Catholic Church, our priests do not write down our confessions and then reference them in an inter-office memo.
Not mention Dom's point that, if the Cardinal really believes it's under the seal of the confessional, no court order should be sufficient to get him to turn over those records.
So if he does turn over the records, it's a tacit admission that this was just a stalling tactic anyway, and he doesn't really believe his own argument.
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