the exits after Mass – and contact their
lawmakers.
Since 2009 alone, state lawmakers
from both sides of the aisle have tried at
least 200 times to extend the civil stat-
ute of limitations for child sexual abuse
cases, according to a USA TODAY analy-
sis, part of a two-year look at model
legislation in partnership with the Ari-
zona Republic and the Center for Public
Integrity.
Many special interests, including the
insurance industry, oppose efforts to
give survivors more time to sue. But two
organizations are uniquely positioned
to wield influence because of their deep
ties to local communities: the Catholic
Church and the Boy Scouts of America.
Where legislation has been intro-
duced, equally coordinated opposition
has followed from the groups that stand
to lose the most.
A flood of lawsuits
California was the first to pass legisla-
tion that temporarily reopened the civil
statute of limitations, offering abuse sur-
vivors a one-year window to sue.
That 2002 law was inspired by the
Boston Globe’s investigation into the
Catholic Church, according to Marci
Hamilton, an expert on statutes of limi-
tation who has been tracking legislation
for two decades.
The newspaper series went beyond
identifying individual perpetrators to
reveal an institutional cover-up. It also
illustrated what advocates have long
said: It can take time for survivors grap-
pling with trauma to come forward.
“It’s very difficult for the victims of
abuse in these religious settings to come
to terms with how it was possible that
God let this happen to them,” said Ham-
ilton, who is CEO of CHILD USA and
teaches law at the University of Penn-
sylvania.
Lawyers, not survivors, pushed for
California to pass legislation in 2002,
she said. The church didn’t oppose the
bill, but it reeled in the aftermath.
About 850 people sued the Catholic
Church while the window was open.
Three hundred others filed lawsuits
against other churches and institutions,
including the Boy Scouts.
Since then, lawsuits have cost them
hundreds of millions of dollars. In one
year alone – from July 1, 2017 to June 30,
2018 – the Catholic Church spent more
than $239.1 million related to child sexu-
al abuse allegations, according to a re-
port in June from the United States Con-
ference of Catholic Bishops.
After the California legislation, the
concept of reviving previously barred
suits – sometimes using almost the
same phrasing – showed up in other
bills across the country. It was proposed
in New York in 2009, New Jersey in 2012,
Pennsylvania in 2013 and Montana this
year, according to USA TODAY’s analy-
sis of the text of each bill.
The Catholic Church mobilized its
opposition, working in tandem with the
insurance industry and, later, the
Scouts. For years, those efforts were
successful: Most bills failed.
Pressure got too intense
Maryland Delegate Eric Bromwell
knew he would face an uphill battle
when he sought to extend his state’s civ-
il statute of limitations in 2008.
Bromwell said Catholic officials told
him the dioceses would be bankrupted
by the “revival window” allowing people
to sue over past abuse. A lot of the abus-
ers were dead, he recalls them saying,
and some allegations were so old that
there was no way for the church to de-
fend itself.
Those are arguments the Catholic
Church has tapped into again and again.
USA TODAY ran 10 of the church’s op-
position statements – including press
releases and letters to government offi-
cials and to parishioners – through a
language-processing algorithm. A
Maryland statement shared key
phrases with a statement in California.
Words from a 2018 statement in Georgia
overlapped with a statement from a
bishop in Wisconsin nine years earlier.
Michigan had phrases in common with
Rhode Island.
Opponents in California and Mary-
land took issue with how their states’
bills treated public institutions versus
private ones. In Maryland, Wisconsin
and Rhode Island, they sought to draw
distinctions between the present and
the past, highlighting criminal back-
ground checks that their organizations
now perform.
At first, that approach worked on
Bromwell. He agreed to hold off on in-
troducing the bill.
But the very next morning, Bromwell
said, a mass email went to alumni of
Calvert Hall, a private Catholic college
prep school the lawmaker had attended.
The email said Bromwell’s bill would de-
stroy the high school.
Bromwell reversed course and intro-
duced his legislation. More reaction
rushed in from all corners.
The first week, callers told him he
would destroy Calvert Hall. The second
week, they warned he would bankrupt
the archdiocese. The third week, mes-
sages became intensely personal, in-
volving his father, a former senator who
had recently been sentenced to prison
in a racketeering conspiracy.
Bromwell said the pushback “pretty
much ruined my private life.” He with-
drew his bill.
“The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do
in my life was call the advocates, people
who had been abused, and tell them
that I couldn’t be their sponsor,” Brom-
well said. “But it was something that I
had to do for me.”
Sean Caine, vice chancellor of com-
munications for the Archdiocese of Bal-
timore, said Catholic officials would
have “shut down” what Bromwell expe-
rienced had they known about it.
“When the church is encouraging
people to reach out to lawmakers, it
does not do it with the direction or ex-
pectation that lawmakers be treated un-
kindly,” Caine said.
Seven years later, Bromwell shared
what happened with his friend and col-
league Maryland state Delegate C.T.
Wilson. Wilson, himself a survivor of
child sexual abuse, said he would intro-
duce the bill.
The Catholic Church again mobilized
parishioners. Church representatives
lobbied lawmakers and testified during
public hearings, Boy Scouts and mem-
bers of the Jewish faith joined in.
Susan Gibbs, a spokeswoman for the
Maryland Catholic Conference, told
USA TODAY the organization’s con-
cerns were based on experience. One of
the dioceses it represents, in Wilming-
ton, Delaware, filed for bankruptcy in
2009 after a similar bill passed in that
state. Funding to Catholic Charitiesthere was cut 40%, Gibbs said, staffing
was cut 10%, and two schools closed.
For years, Wilson’s legislation failed.
He kept trying and, in 2017, lawmakers
passed a version of it, but without the
revival window.Fighting an uphill battleAs a child, Carol Hagan McEntee
thought her older sister, Ann Hagan
Webb, was “a teacher’s pet.” The two at-
tended Sacred Heart elementary school
together in West Warwick, Rhode Island.
“The monsignor used to come and get
her out of class all the time and take her
to the rectory,” McEntee recalled. “We
couldn’t understand why he was doing
that. But now we know.”
Webb said she didn’t start to remem-
ber the abuse until she was 40. Her
abuser, Monsignor Anthony DeAngelis,
died in 1990, according to the Diocese of
Providence’s List of Credibly Accused
Clergy. Webb reported it to the diocese
in 1994, and the church eventually
helped pay for her therapy.
At first, Webb advocated for the
church to reform itself. “I just, over a pe-
riod of years, realized that you’re beat-
ing your head against the wall,” she said.
Webb lobbied for extending the civil
statute of limitations in Massachusetts
and found herself frustrated over the
church’s influence in the legislature.
“It’s like asking a criminal to sit at the
table and decide what their punishment
should be,” she said.
Then, in 2015, her sister became a
Rhode Island state representative.
McEntee’s first attempt failed. This
year, she tried again. The 2019 bill in-
cluded a revival window that CHILD
USA estimated would have prompted
200 suits from survivors, according to a
fiscal impact statement. Amid opposi-
tion, lawmakers removed that window
and gained approval from the General
Assembly. Gov. Gina Raimondo signed it
into law in July. In a statement, the
Rhode Island Catholic Conference
praised the bill as amended.Questionable connectionsMcEntee, Wilson and other lawmak-
ers have used personal connections to
offer insight into the legislation’s value.
But lawmakers with personal connec-
tions to organizations opposing the leg-
islation may not be as vocal about it.
In Georgia, three senators with ties to
the Boy Scouts voted to limit the impact
of a bill.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair-
man Jesse Stone is an Eagle Scout and
assistant scoutmaster. The law partner
of Committee Vice Chairman Bill Cows-
ert represented a church in a sexual
abuse case involving the Scouts. And a
committee member, Senate Majority
Caucus Chairman John F. Kennedy, also
serves on the executive board of the
Central Georgia Council of Boy Scouts of
America, a volunteer position.
Emma Hetherington, director of the
Wilbanks Child Endangerment and
Sexual Exploitation Clinic at the Univer-sity of Georgia School of Law, said she
doesn’t know whether those connec-
tions affected the officials’ objectivity.
But she said they have “a moral duty” to
recuse themselves.
Stone did not respond to requests for
comment. Kennedy and Cowsert both
told USA TODAY that they had no con-
flict of interest and that their connec-
tions did not violate Senate ethics rules.Collision course in PennsylvaniaIntense lobbying, organizations’ in-
fluence and questions over lawmakers’
conflicts of interest all collided in Penn-
sylvania, where state Rep. Mark Rozzi
has tried for years to pass such legisla-
tion. He gained overwhelming House
support in 2016, only to watch the bill
stall after changes in the Senate.
Then-Sen. Stewart Greenleaf wanted
a hearing to determine if the bill’s retro-
active provision was constitutional,
Rozzi said. Greenleaf later recused him-
self, but only after media outlets report-
ed on his law firm’s connections. Some
of the attorneys at his firm had fought
against similar legislation in Delaware,
and another was being paid by the Arch-
diocese of Philadelphia to defend a
priest in a civil lawsuit.
Greenleaf told USA TODAY he
stepped back as soon as he learned of
the conflict. But Rozzi said the damage
was already done. Murt, a Republican,
and Rozzi, a Democrat, both believe the
bill failed because of opposition from in-
surance companies and the church.
The church invested significant re-
sources to get its messages across. The
Pennsylvania Catholic Conference re-
ported spending $615,285 on lobbying
efforts in 2016, according to a USA TO-
DAY analysis of disclosure forms.
The Boy Scouts also opposed the leg-
islation. The Scouts and one of its local
councils spent $486,505 from 2016
through 2018 on lobbying in Pennsylva-
nia, disclosure forms show.
In 2018, the House again voted in fa-
vor of extending the civil statute of limi-
tations for sexual abuse survivors. But
the bill got hung up in the Senate.‘I will fight for the victims’Public attention on the church and
other organizations’ handling of child
sexual abuse allegations has led to more
efforts to extend the civil statute of limi-
tations for survivors.
Since 2009, lawmakers in 38 states
have introduced such bills. Of the 29
states that have enacted such laws, 11
did so for the first time this year. Ten
states no longer have any civil statute of
limitations, and 16 have revived expired
statutes, according to CHILD USA.
Murt said no amount of pressure
from the Catholic Church will make him
walk away from supporting the effort.
“I will defend the victims,” he said,
“and I will fight for the victims in this
case and in every case.”
USA TODAY data journalist Matt Wynn
contributed to this report.Survivors
Continued from Page 1A
Abuse survivor Ann Hagan Webb, right, found herself struggling to bring about
change in the church. Then her sister, Carol Hagan McEntee, a Rhode Island state
representative, took up the fight. PHOTOS BY JOSH T. REYNOLDS FOR USA TODAYAs a child, Carol thought her older
sister, Ann, was “a teacher’s pet.”
Decades later, they realized the truth
of what happened. “We couldn’t
understand. ... But now we know.”COPY, PASTE, LEGISLATE
NEWS USA TODAY z THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2019 z 3A
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