Victims of Clergy Sexual Abuse can bring claims under a number of causes of action
Unfortunately, there have been numerous reports of clergy sexual abuse in the past decades. In particular, the churches that are exclusively male run and hierarchical in organization are also the institutions that have been permitted to operate in secrecy. They are typically the Roman Catholic church, the Mormon Church also known as the Church of the Latter Day Saints and the Jehovah Witnesses. As a result, these institutions have been permitted to operate without interference from courts and lawmakers with the result that victims of sexual abuse, particularly children, remain imperiled by church law and custom.
Nevertheless, in the past two decades courageous survivors and aggressive lawyers across the country have fought back to undercover the deliberate deception, victim suppression, inadequate internal investigations, and adversarial inhibition to suppress criminal prosecution, by pursuing these causes of action under numerous theories of liability.
CAUSES OF ACTION FOR CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE:
1. Sexual abuse/battery: at common law a battery constitutes any unpermitted physical or sexual contact. Sexual abuse definitions are embodied in the criminal codes.
2. Adult exploitation: any sexual conduct between a psychotherapist or member of the clergy may be felonious and civilly actionable.
3. Violation of Mandatory Reporting Act: each state mandates reporting abuse.
4. Violation of the Penal Code: each state has provisions that prohibit aiding and abetting a felony.
5. Failure to Protect: a church institution may assume a duty to use reasonable care to protect and supervise children in its care.
6. Failure to Supervise/Negligent Retention: an employer has a duty to exercise reasonable care to supervise individuals who, because of the employment, may pose a threat or injury to members of the public and to not retain those individuals if they are unfit.
7. Failure to Warn: a church institution has a duty to warn a victim of the propensities ofa perpetrator when the institution stands in some special relationship to either the clergy member or the foreseeable victim and the harm is foreseeable.
8. Breach of Fiduciary Duty: a fiduciary relationship is created when one party places trust and confidence in another who is in a dominant or superior position which requires the one to act for the other’s benefit.
9. Fiduciary Fraud: fiduciary fraud occurs when a fiduciary withholds information that might affect the principal’s judgment if the principal has access to it.
10. Conspiracy: if two or more persons with an unlawful objective after a meeting of the minds committed at least one act in furtherance of the conspiracy and the victim is thereby injured, a claim for civil conspiracy may exist.
11. RICO: under Federal and State RICO laws, this is becoming an emerging cause of action where the habitual and conspiratorial nature of the church’s conduct allows such a cause of action.
12. Vicarious Liability: Visiting the Sins of the Fathers Upon the Church: the concept of vicarious liability of a master for the acts of a servant is one of the oldest legal doctrines. In the area of clergy sexual abuse litigation, the courts have inconsistently applied this theory of liability. However, with the recent exposure of rampant clergy abuse in the recent past, this theory may gain acceptance.
13. Ratification: the doctrine of ratification imposes liability on an employer when the employer adopts, confirms, or fails to repudiate the unlawful acts of an employee.
