Rochester Diocese seeks some legal distance

Attorneys for the Diocese of Rochester have asked a judge to remove them from responsibility for roughly 75 of the claims filed by victims of sexual abuse against them.

In motions filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the diocese argued that the alleged abusers named in those 75 claims were not employed by or supervised by the diocese. Most of the claims in dispute involve members of religious orders or lay employees who worked at Catholic high schools or other institutions.

The motions argue that it is those institutions, or the religious orders that ran them, who bear the responsibility for resolving those claims.

The diocese filed for bankruptcy protection in September 2019, just a month after New York state opened a one-year legal window to file civil lawsuits for past instances of sexual abuse. As part of those proceedings, the Diocese must resolve 506 complaints alleging sexual abuse filed on behalf of 471 individuals.

Fifty-eight of the 75 claims now in dispute involved alleged abuse at Catholic schools, including the Aquinas Institute (15 claims), Bishop Kearney High School (14), Cardinal Mooney High School (13), McQuaid Jesuit High School (11), Notre Dame High School in Elmira (2), Mount Carmel High School in Auburn (1), Nazareth Hall (1) and Sacred Heart Academy (1).

Other claims involve abuse alleged to have happened at St. Joseph's Villa, St. Michael's Mission, a Sisters of Mercy convent and a retreat house in Canandaigua. Two of the claims name a chaplain who worked at Park Ridge Hospital. Two others allege abuse at churches that are not members of the diocese, Spiritus Christi and the Mt Carmel Deliverance Center Church. And a handful of claims name abusers whom the diocese says it cannot identify or who were never members of the diocese.

The latest motions, filed last Friday, do not seek to dismiss the allegations of abuse altogether, a spokesperson for the diocese said in a statement. They simply ask a judge to decide that the diocese should not be the one responsible for paying a settlement.

"It must be noted that in doing so, the Diocese is not questioning the veracity of these claims, but instead is asserting that these specific claims focus on persons or entities that were not and are not under the control or direction of the Diocese of Rochester," the statement said.

A hearing on these motions is scheduled for 11 a.m. Oct. 12 before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Paul Warren.

Claims in dispute

Lawyers for the abuse survivors say they plan to oppose the motions and make the diocese responsible for settling those claims.

Jason Amala of PCVA Law, which represents several of the claimants, said each of the claims will need to be examined on its merits, but he does not believe the diocese should automatically be absolved of responsibility for the abuse that occurred in non-diocesan schools.

"The diocese wants to say it's not responsible for these [members of] religious orders if they were abusing kids, and that's simply not the law," Amala said. "A diocese can very much be held liable for abuse by a religious order member."

Amala says he and the other attorneys for the claimants will need to examine the operating agreements between the diocese and these schools to get clarity on the relationship, but that even if the school was a separate institution, the diocese could still bear some measure of legal responsibility for these abuse claims.

"If you have care custody or control of the child, through a school, for example, you have a duty and responsibility to protect them," Amala said.

One of the questions in each case will be whether the Diocese was made aware of abuse at one of these schools when it was happening.

"A lot of times, if a religious order is working within the diocese and a parent complains or a kid complains, for the most part, that complaint is gonna go to the diocese, not to the religious order, " Amala said. "If the Diocese gets a complaint about a religious order priest, they can't just ignore that. They're responsible if they don't take steps to protect the kids."

As part of the bankruptcy process, the Diocese was required to turn over its "secret files," internal documents that contain information about allegations of abuse against its priests and nuns. While those records remain sealed from public view, Amala says that attorneys can use them to determine what the Diocese knew about allegations of abuse.

A likely outcome, Amala said, is that the responsibility in many of these cases will be divided between the Diocese, the religious order, and the institutions, based on the specific facts of each case.

Status of the bankruptcy case

It has been nearly three years since the diocese filed for bankruptcy and it is unclear how much longer the process will take.

In May, the diocese proposed to settle its federal bankruptcy case by paying nearly $148 million to survivors of child sexual abuse. Under the plan, its insurance carriers would provide $107.25 million to settle all claims. The diocese and its parishes would provide another $40.5 million to create a trust fund to compensate abuse survivors.

A decision on that proposal is pending, but attorneys for the abuse survivors blasted the proposal, calling it a "backroom deal" between the diocese and its insurers.

The diocese made a similar proposal in June 2021, offering to contribute $35 million to a settlement fund. That proposal was rejected by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Paul Warren.

In June 2021, the parties told Judge Warren that they had become deadlocked, filing a series of competing legal motions asking U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Paul Warren to intervene and complaining that the other side was being unreasonable in the court-ordered mediation process.

They were back in court this April to report that the efforts at mediation had once again stalled, with each side asking Judge Warren to intervene and resolve the stalemate. As a result, Judge Warren ruled that the cases that named individual parishes as defendants could have those claims proceed to trial in state court.

"The Diocese, the insurance carriers, and the Abuse Survivors have reached a point where a consensual resolution appears to be fading," Warren wrote in his decision.

Warren also noted that three of the abuse survivors who filed claims have died since the bankruptcy process began.

In its statement about the most recent court filings, a spokesperson for the Diocese said the in-person mediation hearings would resume this week "in a continuing effort to arrive at a consensual plan of reorganization that will provide fair compensation for those who have been harmed."

"The Diocese reaffirms its intention to resolve this matter justly, charitably and in a timely manner", the statement said. "We continue to pray for the survivors of sexual abuse and renew our ongoing efforts to assure that our safe environment protocols protect God's children and all persons from such tragic and sad situations."