A Superior Court judge has just set September 10 as the deadline for
Catholic religious orders to release confidential personnel files of
members who were accused of sexually abusing children. The files are
related to lawsuits that have already been settled.
Attorney Raymond Boucher said the deadline affects more than 50
religious orders that operate independently from the Los Angeles
Archdiocese, which has already made public thousands of pages of files.
The order is part of litigation against the Los Angeles Archdiocese that resulted in a $660 million settlement.
The archdiocese released personnel files about its priests within the
past year, but files of the independent orders that report to the
Vatican through a different authority structure had not been released.
The religious orders were defendants in the original lawsuits that
alleged victims brought against the archdiocese in 2002 and 2003. The
orders agreed to the same 2007 settlement that required the files to be
released, but the logistics of the document release were litigated first
with the archdiocese, said Raymond Boucher, attorney for the
plaintiffs.
With Tuesday's order, the new files for as many as 100 priests and
brothers will be made public as they are provided to the court, but no
later than the Sept. 10 deadline, Boucher said.
The Association of Salesian Brothers, which operates Salesian High
School in Boyle Heights, is the largest of the orders affected by the
judge's deadline. However, there are smaller religious orders that must
also make records public, according to the ruling by Superior Court
Judge Emile H. Elias.
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