Sexual Abuse by Priests
By Tara Pingle

While most of those lawsuits were filed during 2003 or since then, the sexual abuse incidents go back varying numbers of years, even back into the 1950s. For the past four years, the Church was involved in legal negotiations, and made some settlement offers, but plaintiffs’ attorneys turned them down as being insufficient for the harm suffered by those children.

A window of opportunity

So now the Church is in bankruptcy. What does that mean for abused children and their families? Well, it offers an opportunity. While that bankruptcy process will probably plod its way through the legal system for several years to come, right now it’s still possible to file a new abuse claim. At some point, the bankruptcy judge might order all the pending lawsuits to go forward, and there’ll come a time when no more can be filed.

But right now, if you were abused by a priest, or if your child was, you could still file a claim, and law firms all over the country stand ready to represent you.

Lawyers are available if you need one

They were a part of the sea change that happened to the law profession in the 1970s, when it became legal for attorneys to advertise their services. Until that change of rules happened, most people didn’t know which lawyers did what, or how to find a lawyer.

“We thought this system was wrong,” says Len Jacoby, one of the two founders of Jacoby and Meyers. “Everyone, not just the rich, needed to have access to personal injury lawyers and the legal system. Lawyers, doctors, accountants, architects, and other professionals were not allowed to advertise their services. They weren’t even allowed to publicly discuss their practices.”

That all changed, so that now you, and every person who is injured by someone else’s negligence or ill intent can obtain legal representation and file a claim for compensation.

Was your trust violated?

A priest is a person of authority and spiritual guidance for his parish. Members of that parish naturally respect him and put their children in his care. When a priest violates that confidence and takes advantage of a trusting child, he should pay the consequences. It’s surely one of the most contemptible crimes on this planet to abuse a child, whether sexually, emotionally, or physically.

If you had this happen to you, or if your child did, you don’t need to suffer in silence. It was not your fault, nor your child’s fault. You deserve to be given some compensation, and although money can’t repair an emotional or sexual injury, it can bring comfort to life in other ways, and certainly can pay for any counseling or psychotherapy that might be necessary in the wake of this abuse.