Los Angeles archdiocese sued for fraud in sex abuse case

As reported by the AP (6/23), the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is the target of a lawsuit filed Tuesday alleging that church leaders are guilty of fraud and negligence in allowing a priest to continue serving as much as sixteen years after reports were received that he had molested a child. The lawsuit deserves attention because it follows a recent trend in sex abuse cases relying on fraud, rather than molestation or sexual battery, as the basis for its claim. If the courts allow it to go forward, fraud could be the newest weapon in the arsenal of clergy sex abuse victims, mainly because it gets around the problem of a short statute of limitations for sexual abuse (there is no statute of limitations for fraud). In this case, the plaintiff opted not to sue earlier because the archdiocese had led him to believe that the offending priest had been removed.