Source:
New York TimesFiles on Priest Sex Abuse to Be Opened By PAUL VITELLO
Published: May 22, 2009
Connecticut’s highest court ruled on Friday that thousands of pages of documents from sexual-abuse lawsuits filed against priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport that had been kept sealed for more than a decade must be made public. The 4-to-1 decision by the State Supreme Court was the latest milestone in a seven-year legal fight between the Diocese of Bridgeport and four newspapers: The New York Times, The Hartford Courant, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post.
The diocese claimed that the records would open old wounds, while the newspapers argued that they were an important part of the record of the church’s handling of sexual-abuse charges. It is unclear when the documents will be released, or whether further appeals are planned. In a statement late on Friday, Joseph McAleer, a spokesman for the diocese, said officials there were “reviewing our options in response to this decision.”
The documents include depositions by victims, priests and leaders of the Bridgeport Diocese, which was overseen between 1988 and 2000 by Bishop Edward M. Egan, who later became the archbishop of New York. Cardinal Egan retired last month, after nine years in New York. The documents covered by the court’s decision involved 23 lawsuits filed in the early 1990s. They represent sexual-abuse claims against five diocesan priests involving actions that the plaintiffs said occurred between the 1960s and the mid-’80s.
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George H. Freeman, vice president and assistant general counsel of the New York Times Company, said on Friday: “It’s gratifying that at long last these documents should see the light of day. It’s a shame that all the parties involved didn’t see fit to release these documents, which are so much in the public interest, without the need of all these years of litigation.”
In his statement on Friday, Mr. McAleer said the Bridgeport diocese was “deeply disappointed” by the decision. Among other things, he said, the ruling overlooked what he said was the compromised impartiality of a lower court trial judge, Superior Court Judge Jon C. Alander, who sat on a judicial committee charged with reviewing the issue of public access to court records.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/nyregion/23abuse.html?_r=1
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