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Obstacles remain for Pennsylvania child sex abuse window

Morning Call - 12/27/2019

Dec. 27--There is plenty of fight left in one of the chief architects of Pennsylvania's significant progress toward giving survivors of child sex abuse a chance to sue, and he likely will need it.

State Rep. Mark Rozzi got a standing ovation in the state House in November for work on behalf of survivors that included setting in motion a process to amend the state constitution to allow for a two-year window for civil lawsuits based on past child sex abuse.

But the amendment process is long.

It requires lawmakers in the next session of the Legislature, which starts in 2021, to approve the same resolution approved by lawmakers in November. After that, the concept must be approved by voters in a statewide referendum. Meanwhile, already-open civil litigation windows in other states have produced a flood of child sex abuse lawsuits involving potentially huge settlements that could influence the flow of events in Pennsylvania.

"We are not going to stop," said Rozzi, an abuse survivor himself.

A long road ahead

He said he feels confident the 2020 elections will produce a set of lawmakers who will approve the constitutional amendment, and he plans to work to make sure the ballot question given voters "is going to be in the right language for people to understand."

The two-year window was recommended by a statewide investigating grand jury whose 2018 report found credible evidence of sex abuse by more than 300 Catholic priests across the state. The grand jury said Pennsylvania should give older victims a chance to sue because the state's time limits on such lawsuits were much too strict when those children were abused originally.

In the aftermath of the grand jury report, most Catholic dioceses in the state ? including Allentown ? set up compensation programs under which a victim would be paid in exchange for forfeiting the right to file a lawsuit.

Rozzi said those programs removed the potential for many lawsuits from Catholic victims. He said he anticipates that when the Pennsylvania window opens, there could be large numbers of lawsuits against the Boy Scouts and Jehovah's Witnesses, among other defendants.

Church limits its legal liability

Harrisburg attorney Benjamin Andreozzi, whose office has represented many sex abuse survivors, said setting up the programs "was a brilliant move by the church" because it reduced the number of potential lawsuits.

Of the Pennsylvania dioceses, he said, "I would estimate they may have resolved 90 to 95% of their outstanding claims."

Supporting his estimate, he said, was the experience of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester, New York. According to media reports, that diocese early this year abruptly ended a victim-compensation program, was hit by lawsuits when a state-mandated one-year lawsuit window opened in August, then filed for bankruptcy a few months ago.

"They got flooded with those lawsuits," Andreozzi said.

Catholic leaders in Pennsylvania dioceses "were able to pick off" many potential lawsuits by operating the limited-time compensation programs, he said.

A spokesman for the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, Al Gnoza, said in an email, "We are not going to comment on the developments elsewhere."

He referred to a written statement issued by conference Executive Director Eric Failing, who said the organization was neutral on the constitutional amendment concept, and created the compensation programs to help survivors immediately.

"To date, they have paid millions to survivors across the Commonwealth and other cases are still pending," Failing wrote. "We have much to atone for, and it's our hope these settlements help survivors now ? rather than have to wait several years."

No guarantee on 'window'

Another attorney whose office has represented many sex abuse survivors, Stewart Eisenberg of Philadelphia, said there is no certainty that the Pennsylvania constitutional amendment will pass.

Should the next session of the Legislature approve the resolution, Eisenberg said, threatened institutions and insurance companies will "pour in tremendous amounts of money" to try and defeat ballot referendum.

"There will be lots of lobbying," Eisenberg said.

State lawmakers, he said, should have passed a law that created the two-year window, rather than using the constitutional amendment route. He called the compensation programs "inadequate" and said he still expected many lawsuits to be filed.

Rozzi, who pushed for years for a law that would create the window, agreed to a legislative deal this spring that allowed the constitutional amendment resolution to advance. At the heart of the deal, he said, was a realization that taking the traditional route of passing a state law likely would trigger court challenges.

"The Catholic church or some institution would challenge it in the courts and it would be held up for three, four or five years," Rozzi said.

The prime sponsor for the amendment resolution, Republican state Rep. Jim Gregory of Blair County, said he was assured by Republican Senate leaders that it would be reintroduced early in the next session.

"I take those assurances very seriously and I am sure they do, too," Gregory said.

Legal targets emerging beyond church

The hundreds of lawsuits filed in New York after the August opening of the one-year window targeted the Catholic church, the Boy Scouts, Jehovah's Witnesses, public schools and other organizations.

Gregory, who said he was sexually abused as a child, said large organizations often function as "families" to children, and all families have problems. No one, he said, should be surprised if other organizations beside the Catholic church become the target of abuse lawsuits in Pennsylvania.

At a Rozzi press conference in 2018, Michael Finkbeiner, a Harrisburg native and former Jehovah's Witness elder, spoke about an ongoing societal transformation in the treatment of abused women and children.

He said the will of the people to end child sex abuse and bring past cases to light was boosted by revelations about Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky and entertainer Bill Cosby.

Finkbeiner, who resigned as a Jehovah's Witnesses elder in 2016, said the 2018 report of the Pennsylvania grand jury led by Attorney General Josh Shapiro helped put a focus on "sacred institutions."

In response to a written question, Finkbeiner said in an email, "Any institution that puts its status and reputation above the needs of its abused children is now undergoing pressure of legal consequences on both the criminal and civil side."

Morning Call reporter Ford Turner can be reached at 717-783-7305 or fturner@mcall.com

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