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In August of 2010, we filed a lawsuit against Pastor
Derstine, Gospel Crusade Inc. and Gospel Crusade Fellowship Inc., for sexual
abuse of Plaintiff, a minor, by Gerald Derstine at the Strawberry Lake Retreat
in Minnesota.

Earlier today the Archdiocese of Philadelphia placed 21 of
the 37 priests named in the recent Philadelphia Grand Jury Report and accused
of sexually abusing children, on administrative leave.

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California issued an unprecedented opinion today allowing our client’s case using the Alien Tort Statute to go forward.  You can find the entire text of the opinion on our site.  In denying Defendant Cardinal Roger Mahony’s and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, the Court permitted Plaintiff’s…

Today, our firm and Anthony DeMarco, an attorney in Los Angeles, filed a suit on behalf of a courageous survivor who was abused as a young boy by a Salesian priest, Fr. Gerald Wertz, at St. John Bosco High School in Bellflower, California.  You can find a copy of the lawsuit here.  Importantly, Fr. Gerald “Jerry” Wertz is still considered to be in ministry, and is residing in the Salesian Provincial House in San Francisco, adjacent to a high school with over 1,000 students.

In a recent blog post Archbishop Dolan is incorrect in claiming that we accused him of secretly “hiding” the assets referred to in his blog.  The fact is, we simply stated that we had questions about certain financial moves made by the Archdiocese. Indeed, what he did wasn’t hidden.  In fact, he and his financial advisors brazenly “moved” the assets out of the control of the Archdiocese in broad daylight—after the Wisconsin Supreme Court allowed some victims of clergy sexual abuse to sue the Archdiocese.  We think we have grounds to be suspicious…

A case
filed today in Philadelphia by our office, as well as attorneys Dan Monahan
and Marci Hamilton, is brought on behalf of a courageous survivor who was
sexually abused as a child.  The suit names ten defendants, including the
Archdiocese and Archdiocesan officials, alleging a conspiracy to endanger
children by actively concealing sexually abusive priests, and continuing the
priests in ministry despite known credible allegations of child abuse.

In
Philadelphia, three priests and a parochial school teacher are being charged for
sexually abusing two children and the Secretary for Clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is being
charged for endangering the welfare of children by knowingly allowing dangerous
priests to continue in ministry roles where they had access to children.

That is exactly what the Vatican stated when it was faced with accepting service of Terry Kohut’s lawsuit relating to the sexual abuse of hundreds of boys  by Fr. Lawrence Murphy at the St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.   According to a document filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, the Vatican accepted service of the legal documents involved with the lawsuit and then, four days later, the Vatican contacted FedEx and asked FedEx to retrieve the package because the package was “undesired and unwanted.”

Please check out these stories about action taken by a Boston attorney I deeply admire. For the protection of vulnerable children and the healing of suffering victims, Mitchell Garabedian has worked long and hard to compile and then publicly disclose dozens of child molesting clerics.

In a recently discovered internal Vatican document marked “Strictly Confidential” obtained by the Associated Press, the Vatican flexed its muscles over Irish bishops who adopted a child sexual abuse reporting policy that required making a police report.  The policy in question required church leaders to report all child sexual abuse allegations by Irish priests to Irish law enforcement.   According to a letter from the Vatican’s chief representative in Ireland, dated January 31, 1997,  “the situation of ‘mandatory reporting’ [of sexual abuse] gives rise to…