As the cost of clergy sex abuse surpasses $1.5 billion, some U.S. Roman Catholic leaders are taking an aggressive, public stand against attorneys who represent victims.
The new development in the long-running clergy abuse crisis was partly triggered by proposals in several statehouses this year that would create a brief period when molestation claims could be filed - even if the time limits for lawsuits had passed.
Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput portrayed the legislation introduced in Colorado as part of a conspiracy between advocacy groups and attorneys to enrich lawyers at the church's expense.
"Victims' groups may act as stimulants to sympathetic news media and state lawmakers," Chaput wrote in the May edition of the journal First Things. "Plaintiffs' attorneys may then offer help in drafting new legislation from which they themselves hope to benefit."
Mark Chopko, general counsel to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has outraged plaintiffs' lawyers and advocates by encouraging victims to seek settlements without an attorney. Victims would then avoid paying attorney fees, which generally run between 25 percent and 40 percent of each payout.
"The group that stands to gain the most from this is the plaintiffs' bar," Chopko said.
Lawyers for victims say Chaput's comments are another attempt by the church to avoid responsibility for predatory clerics. And they contend it's irresponsible for Catholic officials to suggest that people deal directly with dioceses which for decades ignored or covered up abuse.
"If the defendants, in this case the bishops, did the right thing by the people they had harmed, then there'd be no need for people to hire lawyers," said Larry Drivon, a California attorney who has hundreds of abuse claims pending against dioceses in his state.
Lawyers like Drivon have become the principal targets of complaints from church leaders, who are trying to withstand the bruising financial blow of the long-running crisis.
Three dioceses have sought bankruptcy protection, others have cut budgets and sold property to fund multimillion-dollar settlements - and the claims keep pouring in. Dioceses received 783 new credible allegations last year, according to the bishops' conference, after paying out $1.5 billion in abuse-related costs since 1950.
Drivon and Jeff Anderson, a Minnesota attorney who handles abuse cases nationwide, helped draft a California bill that won unanimous approval abolishing the state's time limits on civil sex abuse lawsuits for one year. That measure prompted hundreds of new claims, while serving as a model for legislation in Ohio, Colorado, Maryland, Delaware and elsewhere.
The idea has so far failed to win approval outside of California.
In Colorado this year, Catholic lobbyists seized on similarities between the California law and one proposed in their legislature to portray the proposal as the work of greedy lawyers. The public pressure grew so great that the bill's sponsor, Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, released hundreds of pages of witness testimony, e-mails and other communication about her involvement with the legislation to prove that she had no contact with Anderson. Anderson said he had no role in proposing the measure, which appears to be dead this session.
Less publicly, church leaders have complained that the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, the most vocal of the victims' groups, takes donations from lawyers, including Anderson and Drivon, who handle abuse cases.
David Clohessy, the network's national director, said donations from plaintiffs' lawyers make up about 18 percent of the group's annual budget, which ranges between $500,000 and $600,000 and supports four employees.
He said it was the "height of deception" for Catholic officials to depict the network as a pawn of attorneys. He argued that changing time limits on lawsuits has, in many cases, been the only way victims could force the church to open files on guilty priests. The Constitution bars applying criminal laws retroactively, and abused children usually take decades to come forward.
"We're a tiny, loosely knit band of deeply hurting victims, trying desperately to eke something positive out of our own horror while getting kicked in the teeth every day by hundreds of paid professional Catholic public relations staff and defense lawyers," Clohessy said.
Steven Lubet, a professor at Northwestern University Law School who specializes in legal ethics, said there is nothing unethical about lawyers donating to victims groups as long as there is no quid pro quo. He also sees no problem with lawyers drafting abuse-related bills.
"That's democracy. People who have interests in the way the law is structured are going to try to persuade legislators to change the law that way," Lubet said, noting that the Catholic Church has its own lobbyists in statehouses around the country.
Still, plaintiffs' lawyers themselves are divided over the issue.
Steve Rubino of New Jersey, who has been handling abuse cases for years, believes lobbying by attorneys creates an easy target for church leaders and undermines victims' work.
Attorney Carmen Durso, of Boston, disagrees. After years of working with victims, he says he feels obliged to be a donor and an advocate. "Money moves people. Money moves institutions," he said. "If the church and other institutions are not at risk to do something about these people they won't do it."