Coverage
of Abuse in the Catholic Church
T. PAUL, April 25 — Jeffrey R. Anderson has made a lot of money suing the
Roman Catholic Church, and he has the hate mail to prove it. A wall of his
office here is devoted to the best of the negative letters, which he has mounted
and framed.
One correspondent wrote, "My God, lawyers have a horrible reputation for
getting rich on human misery, but you carry the profession from the swamp to the
cesspool."
The letters amuse Mr. Anderson, who is small, wiry, intense and a little
mysterious. He keeps the blinds drawn, and the atmosphere in his office is
shadowy and confessional. It is crammed with dark and spooky neo-Gothic art,
most of it with religious overtones.
He pointed out a painting to a visitor. "That's a sinister thing called
'The Priest's Cape,' " he said. "What I deal with is sort of sinister,
too."
Mr. Anderson and half a dozen other lawyers around the country have been working
since the early 1980's in a marginal backwater of the law. They have been suing
Catholic dioceses and officials in sexual abuse cases involving priests and
children. They would, once in a while, hit a litigation jackpot, and they were
not shy about enjoying the notice and money it brought. But they despaired of
ever focusing sustained attention on the problem of pedophile priests.
That has changed, and the old litigation hands now face the difficulties of too
much attention, too many cases and competition on the horizon. In Boston,
Roderick MacLeish Jr., a partner in a national firm, is being assisted by two
dozen lawyers in preparing sexual abuse lawsuits around the country. He admitted
to fatigue. "We can only work 18 hours a day," Mr. MacLeish said,
"and then we run out of steam."
Smaller firms like Mr. Anderson's, which employs 13 lawyers, are deluged.
"I'm getting and trying to field between 100 and 200 calls a day from
survivors," Mr. Anderson said, "about half of whom are breaking their
silence for the first time."
Mr. Anderson welcomed the onslaught, saying, "I am a man in frenzy in
search of chaos."
That frenzy has been focused for almost 20 years now on battling the Catholic
Church. He has represented more than 400 people who say they were abused by
priests, and he estimated that he had won more than $60 million in settlements
from Catholic dioceses. He would not discuss his financial arrangements with his
clients, but plaintiffs' lawyers typically take a third and sometimes as much as
40 percent of settlements and judgments.
Mr. Anderson says he is driven not by money but by anger. He traced his fury at
the church to the social movements of his college days.
"I got agitated in the late 60's and became a rabid antiwar activist,"
he said. "I went to law school because I felt powerless as a hippie. I went
on to become an underground activist on the inside of the power structure."
His anger increased when he learned in 1993 that his daughter Amy, now 28, had
been molested as a girl by a therapist who had formerly been a Catholic priest.
"Every time I make an effort, it's for every survivor and for Amy,
too," he said.
Mr. Anderson continues to raise the stakes. He recently sued Catholic Church
officials under a racketeering law originally intended for organized crime,
saying that their conduct in covering up accusations against priests amounted to
a pattern of criminal conduct. More audaciously yet, he also sued the Vatican.
Even Mr. Anderson's colleagues sometimes question his more creative tactics.
"I don't believe in filing racketeering cases," said Mr. MacLeish,
whose firm has represented more than 300 people who say they were abused by
priests. "I'm not that conspiratorial."
The controversy does not surprise Mr. Anderson, who said: "You sue the
Vatican, you can expect some heat, man. You sue every bishop in America as a
racketeer, you get some heat."
If Mr. Anderson is a product of the counterculture, Mr. MacLeish is his
establishment counterpart. He is the son of the journalist Roderick MacLeish and
the grand-nephew of the poet Archibald MacLeish. His firm has 820 lawyers in 17
offices.
But like Mr. Anderson, Mr. MacLeish's private life has been touched by sexual
abuse.
"I have some very personal reasons for getting into this," he said.
"I went to an English boarding school when I was 7 or 8. Nothing happened
to me, but only because I literally fought them off."
Mr. MacLeish's firm represents 180 people in sexual abuse cases. "We have
30 people on this," he said, including six paralegals, one of whom is a
social worker. "If we can't help them, we're giving them a reference to a
rape crisis center. We've become, in essence, a social service agency."
His firm, Greenberg Traurig, is not the sort that typically handles personal
injury cases, much less sex abuse cases against a powerful institution. The
firm's president, Cesar L. Alvarez, noted that another partner, Barry Richard,
had represented George W. Bush in the litigations arising from the 2000
presidential election.
Mr. Alvarez said the sexual abuse litigation would not offend the firm's
corporate clients.
"This is not taking an adversarial position with the church," he said.
"From a human perspective I think the church will come out better as a
result of these cases."
It was not long ago that very few lawyers would accept cases involving
accusations of sexual abuse against clergymen.
"These cases were generally referred to lawyers who were practicing on the
fringes of their local practices, people who didn't have a lot to lose,"
said Prof. Patrick J. Schiltz, dean of the University of St. Thomas School of
Law in Minneapolis.
Joyce Seelen, a Colorado lawyer who has represented 30 to 40 plaintiffs in
sexual abuse cases involving clergymen of various denominations, remembered
accepting an abuse case in the early days for want of anything better.
"Females just didn't get referred a lot of good personal injury
cases," Ms. Seelen said.
Lawyers representing people who say they have been victims of sexual abuse by
clergymen have for the most part not developed into anything like the cohesive
plaintiff's bar that dominates tobacco, asbestos and other giant claims.
"It is an unusual bar, but it has some elements in common with specialized
parts of the plaintiffs' bar," said Professor Schiltz, who represented
churches of many denominations in sexual abuse cases while in private practice.
He says plaintiffs' lawyers share information, cultivate the same expert
witnesses and lobby legislatures, mostly to extend statutes of limitations.
"They aren't necessarily the best lawyers in the world in their ability to
brief cases and make arguments to judges," Professor Schiltz said.
"But they're great storytellers, and they're very savvy with the
media."
Sylvia Demarest, a Texas lawyer who won a $120 million jury verdict in a sexual
abuse case against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas, said closer ties among
plaintiffs' lawyers were inevitable. "As time goes by," Ms. Demarest
said, "you will see more and more cooperation as lawyers realize they can
have a social impact and earn a fee."
The established plaintiffs' lawyers are fearful, though, that the scandals will
attract new lawyers who will fail to give victims needed attention. "I'm
concerned this will turn into a fast food area of the law," said Mitchell
Garabedian, who has represented more than 100 victims of John J. Geoghan, the
former priest in the Boston Archdiocese who was convicted of molestation.
Mr. Anderson noted another concern. "I live in fear that someone will bring
a case that should not be brought, like the Bernardin fiasco," he said,
referring to the abuse charges made against the late Cardinal Joseph L.
Bernardin of Chicago and then recanted. "I worry about a public relations
setback."
In general, though, Mr. Anderson said he would welcome the company of other
plaintiffs' lawyers in what is fast becoming a lucrative specialty.
"There is money to be made," he said. "That's fine. I encourage
everyone to come in."
He has a new project in mind, also involving sexual abuse by religious
officials, and it has captured his imagination.
"We're launching a major assault on the Mormon Church," he said
