Unequal Protection under the Law

The bill name is HB 5473 and it seeks to do away with the current 30 year statute of limitations on child sexual abuse charges. Bishops in Connecticut are attempting to quash the bill and are hoping to enlist the help of their parishioners, claiming that it could open the floodgates for a crippling number of complaints against former and current clerical staff.

At the moment under Connecticut law, a complainant has thirty years past his or her eighteenth birthday to file suit. The new bill would eliminate this limitation completely and an official allegation of abuse could be made any time after the event is alleged to have occurred.

The important thing to bear in mind when thinking about the Church's opposition to the bill is that nowhere in the bill itself does it even mention the Catholic Church; it is focused purely on extending the deadline that those who have suffered abuse have to file charges against their abuser. In no way does it single out the Church as the intended target of the new legislation. Even so, panic has ensued.

My own feelings about religion aside, it is difficult not to ask why the Church has such a vested interest in seeing the demise of the bill. The Church states that the extension of the deadline paves the way for "frivolous" lawsuits that will hinder its ability to serve the community. Whilst I hate to lend any credence to the notion that unless the accused capitulates to any kind of test to prove their innocence they must be guilty of something, in this case (and in light of recent revelations) a cynical observer might posit that keeping the law unchanged would ensure the extent of child abuse in the Church remains unrevealed.

Opposition to the bill is not without merit, it has to be acknowledged. Attempting an accurate retelling of the facts of an episode in a person's life that occurred decades before is very difficult, and even more so with something as traumatic as sexual abuse. Memory is extremely susceptible to suggestion and there are many documented cases of false but persuasively detailed accounts of abuse at the hands of trusted family members or guardians. Often in these cases the seed is planted in the mind of the child by warring parents or irresponsible psychologists; the Church claims that those who would conjure up groundless claims against it would in this situation come in the form of unscrupulous lawyers.

Conversely, the mind has formidable power to repress certain memories of a disturbing nature. Both situations make allegations of sexual abuse one of the hardest things to conclusively prove (bar actual physical evidence, of course).

Yet one can't help but feel that the Church is trying to pre-emptively suppress further controversy and shame. If the Church is confident in its assertion that the abuse exposed in the last few weeks is limited to a small number of its flock then surely, safe in that knowledge, they should welcome any investigation to prove their claim.

In light of the recent letter acquired by the AP that implicates the then-Cardinal Ratzinger in at least a slowing down of the the investigation into Stephen Kiesle, a California priest who eventually plead no contest to allegations of child molestation, it is more difficult to believe that Church leaders have the good of the community in front of mind when considering how to address these allegations.