November 17, 2023
NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Nola.com [New Orleans, LA]
November 17, 2023
By Stephanie Riegel
After three-and-a-half years of courtroom squabbles, the Archdiocese of New Orleans and attorneys representing hundreds of victims of child sexual abuse are far from a deal that would allow the local Roman Catholic church to emerge from federal bankruptcy protection.
Two days of hearings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, where Judge Meredith Grabill is overseeing the church’s Chapter 11 reorganization, covered a host of issues related to property sales, insurance claims and whether survivors of clergy sexual abuse should be permitted to file suit against individual parishes in addition to the archdiocese.
They yielded no rulings and largely demonstrated to parishioners, the public and Grabill how a process Archbishop Gregory Aymond hoped would allow the church to put the abuse crisis behind it had descended into bitter and drawn out legal disputes.
Attorneys representing abuse survivors are frustrated by the lack of progress, they said during the hearings. Meanwhile, attorneys for insurance companies said they’re being left out of settlement talks that will inevitably involve them.
“Everything has been a knife fight since day one,” said an exasperated Grabill while admonishing attorneys for the archdiocese for failing to disclose information related to a property sale.
She said she would likely need to “start imposing a move collaborative process.”
A long fight
September 28, 2023
UPDATED SEPTEMBER 28, 2023 8:14 AM
Deanna Hampton wants justice for her son. She wants the priest accused of sexually abusing her little boy to be brought back to the United States. She wants him to stand trial. She wants her son’s bravery – exemplified when he testified openly before a grand jury in 2014 – to mean something. Trevor died in a tragic accident two years later. TOP VIDEOS
But Deanna Hampton also wants something else. She wants those she believes have played a role in denying her son justice – most notably the Calaveras County District Attorney and the Catholic Church – to be held accountable. She also has questions for the FBI. The church acknowledges that Father Michael Kelly sexually abused Hampton’s son, Trevor Martin, then an altar boy, and at least two other young boys during his time in the Diocese of Stockton. “The diocese accepts full responsibility for the abuse of Trevor and the pain to him and your family,” a letter to Hampton from the diocese in 2017 said. Kelly denied the allegations.
Read The Full Story Here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article277968368.html#storylink=cpy
August 25, 2023
WASHINGTON (DC)
Justia [Mountain View CA]
August 22, 2023
By Kathryn Robb
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Some changes in the law are better late than never.
In 1978, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Reform Act, which created Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. In short, Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code system was designed for those honest businesses who fell on hard times. It gave them a new day. The law allows a company to continue its day-to-day operations through the reorganization process and ultimately protects the business from the weight of its creditors.
In the past four decades, class action defendants, and their lawyers, have reaped the most benefits. The protections Congress intended have been morphed into the greatest legal shield for bad actors and negligent institutions. They have worn a clear path in their repeated sprint to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Most notably, they include: Purdue Pharma, Boy Scouts of America, USA Gymnastics, and the Catholic Church.
August 18, 2023
https://wtop.com/inside-wtop/2023/08/whos-gonna-believe-an-11-year-old-boy-victim-of-clergy-sex-abuse-speaks-out/
A nightmare has haunted WTOP anchor Dan Ronan for decades. The recurring dream has plagued him for most of his life.
“I’m being chased out of the parking lot,” 63-year-old Ronan told WTOP’s DMV Download podcast. “I’m being chased through that parking lot on a dark evening. And he’s chasing me and he’s … screaming at me. And before he would catch me, I would wake up sweating and crying and shaking.”
In 1971, Ronan was sexually assaulted in Chicago, Illinois, by Father Thomas Gannon — a respected priest and professor who went on to teach sociology at Georgetown University between 1983 and 1986. Ronan was in the sixth grade at the time, and didn’t tell a soul about the assault for nearly 50 years.
July 31, 2023
BALTIMORE (MD)
The Baltimore Banner [Baltimore MD]
July 31, 2023
By Justin Fenton and Julie Scharper
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The women spent hours recounting painful memories to investigators with the Maryland Office of the Attorney General. They told of the priests who pulled them out of class at Archbishop Keough High School 50 years ago, then brutally raped and sexually assaulted them.
But when the attorney general’s office released its massive report on sex abuse in Baltimore’s Catholic archdiocese in April, the two women were shocked. Their stories were there on page 258, but a key detail was missing: the name of one of the men who they say raped them.
The report names more than 150 clergy and archdiocesan personnel accused of perpetrating or covering up abuse, with 15 names redacted. But this man’s name was not in the report. He was described only as “the Jesuit intern.”
