Father Thomas Adamson is one of the more notorious of the Catholic Church's serial abusers. His criminal acts span over twenty years, during which time two dioceses persisted in reassigning him; upon each new assignment, fresh allegations would arise in his new parish, thereby causing another reassignment, and so on. While he has not himself been prosecuted for his crimes, the Catholic Church has paid over a million dollars in jury awards to a subset of his victims.
But not all his accusers have been successful at recovering compensatory awards. An article in last Wednesday's Star Tribune newspaper reports that a lawsuit filed by a Twin Cities man alleging he was abused by Adamson on several occasions from 1980 to 1982, at Church of the Risen Savior, in Burnsville, Minnesota, was dismissed on the ground that the incidents occurred too long ago. The local archdiocese has now asked that $64,000 in costs it incurred defending the case be recovered from the plaintiff.
It's been twenty years since the seven-figure jury award for the Church's negligence regarding Father Adamson. You might think it would have learned something about what not to say or do on any charge relating to molestation by its priests. The law permitting defendants to recover money for costs from unsuccessful plaintiffs is meant to discourage the filing of nuisance lawsuits. Does the Church view the complaints against Father Adamson as trivial? Its actions for twenty years suggest that it does, and its action availing itself of provisions in the law allowing defendants to recover costs from unsuccessful plaintiffs has the effect of corroborating testimony. Pieties, like those of the pope when meeting with victims, are just part of a public relations script. The Church's view of its priest's victims is to be found in its legal moves.
Father Adamson is protected from criminal prosecution by statutes of limitation. If he had not been protected by the Church, quietly kicked down the street to the next parish instead of handed over to the police, a judge and jury would long ago have had a chance to render the appropriate judgment based on criminal statutes. But because the Church shielded him, his victims have recourse only to civil actions alleging negligence on the part of the Church; and when one of these plaintiffs fails, not on the merits but on a technicality arising from another statute of limitations, the Church responds by attempting to collect from him costs that likely surpass his annual income.
Only the superannuated virgins residing in the hermetically sealed upper reaches of the Church hierarchy can fail to see how outrageous this is. Yet they expect us to listen to them about the evils of gay marriage and contraception? It'd be laughable if lives hadn't been ruined.
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