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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLouisiana High Court: Priests Have a "Property Right" Not to Be Sued For Sexual Abuse
https://ballsandstrikes.org/legal-culture/louisiana-supreme-court-church-abuse-case/When you think of the Due Process Clause of the Constitution, which says that no one shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, what rights do you imagine this language protecting? Perhaps the right not to be imprisoned by the government without a fair trial, or the right to be free of unjustified police confiscations of your belongings. According to a 4-3 Louisiana Supreme Court majority in Bienvenu v. Diocese of Lafayette, though, a due process right you may have failed to consider is the right of priests and their enablers not to be held accountable by victims of their sexual abuse.
Over the course of years in the 1970s, several boys between the ages of eight and fourteen in St. Martinville, Louisiana, were repeatedly sexually assaulted by their parish priest, suffering serious physical and emotional trauma. Like most child sexual abuse survivors, they did not disclose the abuse until they were in their fifties and sixties. Recognizing the developmental and emotional difficulties preventing survivors from disclosing childhood abuse, in 2021, the Louisiana legislature unanimously passed the Louisiana Child Victims Act, which provided a three-year look-back window allowing survivors to file lawsuits that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations. The law, versions of which have been passed in about half of states, finally allowed the St. Martinville survivors to sue the church and diocese that harbored their abuser.
Enter the Louisiana Supreme Court. In an opinion written by Justice James Genovese and published on March 22, the court found an absolute property right in the institutions right not to be sued. The Louisiana Child Victims Act, wrote Genovese, cannot be retroactively applied to revive plaintiffs prescribed causes of action, since that would divest defendants of their vested right to plead prescriptionto defend themselves by asserting that the statute of limitations had run. The decision essentially strikes down the look-back window, leaving survivors once again powerless to hold their abusers accountable. It is a harrowing example of the legal systems ability to obscure the nature of disputes and turn survivors real-life trauma into euphemistic abstractions, while at the same time protecting powerful institutions in the name of otherwise ephemeral property rights.
The due process clauseboth the one in the U.S. Constitution and an identical version in the Louisiana Constitutionare important limits on the governments ability to intrude on the rights of ordinary residents. However, the Louisiana Supreme Courts application of the concept to sexual abusers stretches the idea of property rights to its breaking point, while also ignoring the word from which the Clause derives its name: rights cannot be abridged without due process of law. As the dissent points out, the majoritys treatment of an absolute property right to immunity from civil liability elevates that procedural right above other, fundamental rightslike, say, not being sexually abused by an adult in a position of public trust.
*snip*
Faux pas
(14,785 posts)AllaN01Bear
(19,881 posts)getagrip_already
(15,325 posts)flashman13
(749 posts)Mr. Evil
(2,893 posts)the catholic church gets to keep their precious fucking money.
struggle4progress
(118,566 posts)Solly Mack
(90,894 posts)Biophilic
(3,855 posts)I truly live in a time I understand less and less. I'm sputtering. Once again the true victim is victimized. Churches have too much power.
SorellaLaBefana
(176 posts)After all, are not a shepard's sheep his PROPERTY to do with as he will?
Let us now prey...
Kennah
(14,407 posts)GregariousGroundhog
(7,541 posts)Looking at this from a different angle, wasn't the Louisiana law that got struck down also in violation of constitutional protections against ex post facto laws? The church's punative liability had expired and now the government was trying to make them liable again after the fact?
I greatly dislike the Catholic Church and feel bad for the victims. I also feel like this law may have been problematic from the start.
keopeli
(3,544 posts)It's a conflict at the nexus of law and order. Can a new law make a past event a crime if it wasn't a crime when it happened? Can a novel circumstance create a law that negates an act protected by the constitution just because the concept is new?
Current conventional wisdom lauds these 'windows' that negate statutes of limitation in certain circumstances. However, history may not look so kindly on this behavior, especially if this newly opened 'window' becomes a pandora's box that is used, in the future, to revive crimes that are extremely unpopular.
For instance, can the GOP pass a law that says past abortions are now deemed criminal and can be pursued through criminal or civil litigation? I sincerely believe this is the path we are on if we do not change course soon.
I am being careful with my words because I am an advocate of the fruits of the Me Too movement and the cultural shift that has stopped dismissing the victim. However, in the past, a new law based on a new social norm would only affect cases going forward. For instance, what if all the behavior of people that was supported by Jim Crow laws was criminalized, not just going forward, but past behavior could be litigated either through civil or criminal court. The effect such would have on our society would likely rip the social fabric apart. Indeed, we are witnessing the shredding of our social fabric based largely on new attitudes of society at large. I concur with these new attitudes! I was the victim of abuse under the old norms and am now living more freely because of these changes. However, I still recognize that criminalizing what was once acceptable behavior and pursuing punishment legally is a very dangerous road to take. My past abusers can no longer do what they once did to me and that is progress. If I were to seek retribution now, legally, by benefit of a "window", no one would benefit. While it may give me personally a sense of redress, it would not change the world for the better because the world has already changed and our laws now reflect that. Instead, it is likely to inflame the passions of not only the past abuser, but all of the people that are touched by my pursuit of justice, creating a cognitive and social dissonance that calls into question whether justice or equity has been achieved.
Do I agree with the LA Supreme Court decision? Absolutely NOT! Do I empathize with the victims? Absolutely! Do I think this legal "window" has corrected an injustice? I'm not so sure. I fear the precedent that these "window" laws creates. I fear that the future may see "window" laws criminalizing past behavior that was not criminal at the time or that has lost its virtue due to untimely justice. Untimely justice can be used perniciously and, given the nature of those in the MAGA movement, I fear they will find a way to abuse this legal "window" in the worst possible way.
Peace
See my clarification of the point I am trying to make and my apology for not using very good examples in my post No. 18 below. LINK to Post 18
getagrip_already
(15,325 posts)In this, and tsf's case, the original act was a crime at the time of commission and only passed into grace via the statute of limitations. They were still crimes, they just couldn't be prosecuted beyond a proscribed number of years. The offender should have expected punishment when committing the act.
In the case of prior abortions, they were legal and thus not criminal at the time they were committed.
You can't go back and say that an act you had no idea would some day be illegal can now be prosecuted.
keopeli
(3,544 posts)I agree that my post conflated the two. I'm sorry I didn't put more time into writing and editing it.
I remain concerned about both issues. These "windows" primarily pause the statute of limitations. This is a concern to me for all the reasons I mentioned.
My examples were not very good because they did not consistently employ the "window" laws to pause the statute of limitations. I would have been better served to use examples that were in line with that reasoning.
However, I can easily see using "window" laws beyond their limited pausing of a statute of limitations. For instance, abortion was once criminal. It enjoyed a 50 year hiatus from criminality and then returned to being criminalized in many jurisdictions. A nefarious actor could reason that abortion should have always been criminal and that the Roe years were an aberration of the law. Do you see where I am going? I put nothing past the minds and twisted evil of these Christian Nationalist crazies. I do not think it is a big stretch to go from using 'windows' to pause a statute of limitation and using "windows" to correct a supposed "legal aberration".
Again, I'm sorry I did not spend more time editing and elaborating. I just didn't have the stamina to keep elaborating for a simple post. Maybe I'll write a more carefully crafted OP and more fully express what my thoughts are on the issue. Meanwhile, thanks for the correction. I hope I have expressed myself a little better this time around.
Peace
ananda
(29,032 posts)and I'll tell you it's the courts and the whole criminal
(in)justice system!
orwell
(7,789 posts)...start with the conclusion, then make up whatever bullshit you need to validate said conclusion.
It is why I have lost all respect for the court system.
Praise OJ!
PatSeg
(48,401 posts)malaise
(270,649 posts)Eff them all - the priests and these corrupt judges
twodogsbarking
(10,315 posts)Pas-de-Calais
(9,929 posts)et tu
(1,118 posts)gave it up for lent several years ago.
will this give priests carte blanche at the alter???
localroger
(3,645 posts)This isn't about protecting the priest's supposed 'property right', it's about protecting the Church. Unlike most Christian denominations, Catholic priests take vows of poverty and have no possessions of their own, so it's really impossible to sue a Catholic priest for money damages without suing the Church. And the Church has deep pockets, which makes it an attractive target for lawsuits. (deservedly so in this case, but I digress.) This ruling is obviously meant to protect the Church from these sex abuse lawsuits. The reasoning is still bullshit, but the court didn't pull this rabbit out of its left nostril to protect Pastor Dumbfuck and his congregation of 30 out on Dumbfuck Pass Road. This is about protecting an institution that is so important in this state that we have parishes instead of counties. I doubt anyone thinks it will hold up under appeal, but it gives everyone a few more years to shuffle shit around and sweep stuff under the rug for when accountability is in vogue again.
Hekate
(91,650 posts)WTF