{"id":265,"date":"2009-02-10T14:59:54","date_gmt":"2009-02-10T14:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/second-thoughts-la-abuse-story.html"},"modified":"2009-02-10T14:59:54","modified_gmt":"2009-02-10T14:59:54","slug":"second-thoughts-la-abuse-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/second-thoughts-la-abuse-story.html","title":{"rendered":"Second thoughts: LA abuse story and Iraq vet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week <\/strong>I linked to a story from the LA CityBeat paper<\/a> that was making the rounds indicating that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was engaged in an awful-sounding legal strategy to deny a possible abuse victim recourse to the courts. The victim, “John TH Doe” in court papers, was reportedly in Iraq when the State of California created a one-year window for victims to sue even if the statute of limitations expired. John TH Doe claims he was sevring overseas and thus was entitled to an exemption.
\nThat is his claim, and lawyers for the archdiocese apparently are arguing he doesn’t merit that exemption. But I took the word of a free paper I don’t know too readily, it seems–the peril of blogging always passing as journalism.
\nA spokesman for the LA Archdiocese, Tod Tamberg, posted a resonse to the story in the comments section of the piece<\/a><\/strong> in part because he was never contacted about the story–bad move–and in part because the story had a lot of relevant info missing–such as the fact that the LA Archdiocese is not a defendant in the suit, nor did the alleged abuse happen in the archdiocese. rather, it took place in the neighboring Orange diocese. .
\nBad journalism. Read the rest of Tamberg’s comments here:<\/p>\n

Response by Tod Tamberg, Archdiocese of Los Angeles, to L.A. City Beat story
\nReading the recent L.A. City Beat story, “Mahony to Iraq War Vet: Screw Yourself,” one might be forgiven for assuming that Cardinal Mahony is fighting a sex abuse lawsuit filed by a man who served in Iraq in 2003. The story says the man wants to sue using the 2003 California law that lifted for one year the statute of limitations on lawsuits for past sexual abuse because he was in the military overseas in 2003. The story says that he claims that because he was in Iraq in 2003, the law grants him a filing extension.
\nThe truth is, however, that much of the above as reported by L.A. City Beat is not accurate.
\n1. Neither Cardinal Mahony or the Archdiocese of Los Angeles are named in the lawsuit: The Archdiocese merely appeared at a hearing called to determine whether there are enough facts to allow the man’s complaint to proceed at all. Even if the case goes beyond this stage, the Plaintiff will still have to demonstrate actual facts to support being able to actually name a Defendant.
\n2. The alleged abuse did not happen in the Archdiocese: The reporter casually refers to the alleged abuse as taking place when the man was a 17-year-old student at an “L.A.-area high school.” In fact, the high school is in the Orange Diocese, not the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The Diocese of Orange was created in 1976. The alleged abuse was claimed to have happened in the 1980s.
\n3. The initial complaint didn’t claim sexual abuse: In the initial complaint the man says that a priest “attempted” to touch him when he was a 17-year-old student. When he discovered that this did not constitute abuse or battery, he filed an amended complaint alleging that the priest grabbed his crotch and groped him. Inexplicably, the amended complaint still retains the “attempted” to touch language later in the complaint, after the new language alleging the other acts.
\n4. The complaint does not mention that the man is an Iraq War veteran: Though the City Beat story creates the impression that the man served in Iraq, the complaint only briefly states that he was in the military. It does not say whether he actually set foot in Iraq, or when, or what he did, or for how long. Indeed, his attorney said in Court that the man was stationed in the U.S.
\nThe L.A. City Beat story actually claims far more than does the Complaint itself. Why? Apparently, the man’s attorneys used the reporter to write what amounts to a press release, with assumed “facts” that, as it turns out, are unsupported by the Complaint itself.
\nBased on the information above, we call upon L.A. City Beat to retract its story.
\nposted by Tod on 2\/08\/09 @ 06:13 p.m.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There has of this posting been no response to Tamberg’s comments, which there should be. I do think there is a tendency to take lawyers’ accounts at face value in these cases, and that has too often led to exaggerations that wind up victimizing the abuse survivors yet again.
\nAs for me, I shouldn’t have posted on the initial story until, and if, I had a better account.
\nMea culpa<\/em>. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I linked to a story from the LA CityBeat paper that was making the rounds indicating that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was engaged in an awful-sounding legal strategy to deny a possible abuse victim recourse to the courts. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}