LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
A Catholic diocese based in the state of Delaware has filed for US bankruptcy protection on the eve of a civil trial involving high-profile sex abuse.
The move automatically delays the case, the bishop of the diocese said the move offered the best chance for victims of sexual abuse to be treated fairly. Obviously he's a student of the 'Father Ted school of plausible excuses'.
But an attorney for the victims said the action was a desperate attempt to hide the truth from the public.
"This is a painful decision, one that I had hoped and prayed I would never have to make," Bishop W Francis Malooly said in a statement on the diocese's website.
He said that talks with the eight victims bringing Monday's case had broken down, and there were fears that too large a settlement would leave the diocese without sufficient resources to compensate another 133 people with outstanding claims.
"Filing for Chapter 11 [bankruptcy protection] offers the best opportunity, given finite resources, to provide the fairest possible treatment of all victims of sexual abuse by priests of our diocese," he said.
But Thomas Neuberger, a lawyer representing 88 of the victims, said the purpose of the bankruptcy filing was to conceal "thousands of pages of scandalous documents" and vowed to contest the move.
"This filing is the latest, sad chapter in the diocese's decades-long 'cover-up' of these despicable crimes, to maintain the secrecy surrounding its responsibility and complicity in the sexual abuse of hundreds of Catholic children,"
Reply With Quote
