{"id":2879,"date":"2006-04-20T12:34:24","date_gmt":"2006-04-20T12:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/suing-the-church.html"},"modified":"2006-04-20T12:34:24","modified_gmt":"2006-04-20T12:34:24","slug":"suing-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/suing-the-church.html","title":{"rendered":"Suing the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the new First Things, Archbishop Chaput of Denver makes his case against certain legislative efforts to expand the statutes of limitations for civil liability in his state – and elsewhere<\/a><\/p>\n

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In judging it, however, we need to consider the bill\u2019s basic fairness. Any revision to civil statutes of limitations must be comprehensive, fair, and equally applied. This almost never happens. The data clearly show that the sexual abuse of minors is not a disproportionately Catholic problem. In fact, some of the worst adult sexual misconduct with minors occurs in public institutions, particularly public schools. But in most states, those schools enjoy some form of governmental immunity. In other words, it\u2019s far easier to sue a private institution, such as a Catholic diocese, than it is to sue a public-school district. It\u2019s also a lot more lucrative since, even if governmental immunity were waived, public schools and institutions usually enjoy the added protection of low caps on damages (in Colorado, $150,000). For exactly the same sexual abuse in a public school and a Catholic parish, the difference in financial exposure is millions of dollars.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This has a clearly prejudicial impact on Catholics. But it\u2019s also bad law for everybody. Hofstra University\u2019s Charol Shakeshaft, the leading expert on public school sexual misconduct, testified to the Colorado General Assembly earlier this year that nearly 7 percent of students nationally report \u201cbeing sexually abused in a physical manner by an educator in public schools.\u201d That means, according to Shakeshaft, that \u201cof the approximately 45 million students attending public and private K-12 schools, more than 3 million will have been the target of physical<\/em> sexual exploitation by an employee of the school by 11th grade.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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If the sexual abuse of minors is so grievous\u2014and it most certainly is\u2014why should its punishment be harsh for Catholic and other private institutions, but soft for public schools where it occurs more frequently? Ironically, most current state laws hold public schools and institutions less accountable\u2014precisely because citizens pay taxes for them. That makes no sense. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the new First Things, Archbishop Chaput of Denver makes his case against certain legislative efforts to expand the statutes of limitations for civil liability in his state – and elsewhere In judging it, however, we need to consider the bill\u2019s basic fairness. Any revision to civil statutes of limitations must be comprehensive, fair, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSuing the Church - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/suing-the-church.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Suing the Church - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the new First Things, Archbishop Chaput of Denver makes his case against certain legislative efforts to expand the statutes of limitations for civil liability in his state – and elsewhere In judging it, however, we need to consider the bill\u2019s basic fairness. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}