Litigating Clerical Sexual Abuse
When and Where
Speakers
Description
Join us for the public talk "Litigating Clerical Sexual Abuse," part of a 2023-2024 Andrew Mellon Sawyer Seminar titled “Evasion: Thinking the Underside of Surveillance.”
About the talk:
Clerical sexual abuse in the United States first surfaced in Louisiana and then Minnesota in the 1980s. There were others in New Orleans, Milwaukee, and Chicago in the early 1990s, and then a spate of cases in Boston in 2001. Today more than one hundred dioceses and religious orders have released lists of credibly accused priests and dozens have filed for bankruptcy, with the total amount of settlements paid to victims nearly topping $4 billion. The coverage of these events has focused almost exclusively on how bishops across the United States transferred known perpetrators from parish to parish, but the Church also deploys far more sophisticated tactics to evade accountability for their clerics’ crimes. Join Professor Kevin Lewis O’Neill for a conversation with Patrick J. Wall and Levi Monagle to learn more about their years of experience holding the Church accountable.
Note: Event details can change. Please visit the unit’s website for the latest information about this event.