A man who says he was abused by a former Chicago priest known as “Father Happy Hands” told his story following a settlement last month.
Larry Kubbins, 60, held a press conference opening up about the alleged abuse by the Rev. Daniel Mark Holihan, who died in 2016, and had a message for survivors across the world.
Rev. Daniel Mark Holihan
“It’s been a weight I’ve had for almost 50 years,” Kubbins said. “They need to not be afraid to report it. I was not smart enough to listen to my mother and walked away from it.”
Kubbins alleges Holihan sexually abused him twice — once at Our Lady of the Snows and once at a lake house belonging to Holihan in Wonder Lake. During the alleged abuse, Kubbins and the attorney general’s office said children would call Holihan “Father Happy Hands.”
“He couldn’t keep his hands off boys, he took me to the boat and got me onto the lake,” Kubbins said. “He would get us behind the church, always pretending to straighten our alter boy uniforms and getting extremely close.”
In addition to Our Lady of the Snows, Holihan also worked at St. Patrick (1957-1965), St. Aloysius (1965-1968), St. Sylvester (1968-1969), St. Francis de Sales (1969-1973), St. Jane de Chantal (1973-1979), Our Lady of the Snows (1979-1990) and St. Jerome (1990-1991).
Holihan was ordained in 1957. In 1990, his ministry ability was limited with monitoring and the archdiocese removed his faculties to minister as a priest in 2002.
The Illinois Attorney General’s Office said Holihan has 40 reported survivors.
According to a 2005 document written by Archbishop Cardinal Francis George, he decreed Holihan guilty and said “the accusations are so numerous against Father Holihan and the description of the actions are so clear that there can be no doubt that Father Holihan is guilty of the delict described.”
In 2005 Holihan was not laicized, which means officially removed from clerical duty, in what Cardinal George called “the ultimate penalty.” That happened in 2010, according to records.
“Because of the numerous offenses and the denial on the part of Father Holihan of what is so obvious to everyone else, I would be inclined to recommend dismissal from the clerical state in this case. However, given Father Holihan’s age and the face that it would be more dangerous to allow him out in public without being monitored carefully, I have decided not to ask for the ultimate penalty in this matter,” former Archbishop Cardinal Francis George wrote in the 2005 Archdiocese letter.
However, the Illinois Attorney General’s Office claims the archdiocese could have acted sooner.
“The Archdiocese of Chicago had more than one chance to stop Father Daniel Holihan from sexually abusing young boys. Holihan was an active pastor in several Chicago parishes until 1990 and is now known as one of the more notorious abusers in archdiocesan history. The archdiocese knew what Holihan was doing to children years before it removed him from the pastorate—but during that time, it did nothing to stop him, taking him at his word that he could turn over a new leaf of his own accord. And even after Hoder (the accused Rev. James Allen Hoder) resigned, archdiocesan officials sought to keep certain details quiet and established such lax control over his conduct that the priest was soon spotted socializing with children as if nothing had happened. More than a decade passed before the archdiocese finally decided to subject Holihan to strict monitoring. In the meantime, countless children had needlessly been put at risk,” the attorney general’s office wrote about Holihan.
Kubbins agreed with the attorney general’s office.
“He’s another example of the church knowing about him and then transferring him,” Kubbins said. “The Catholic Church got Father Holihan out of dodge every chance they could.”
Kubbins’ attorney said he reached a “low six-figure settlement” last month from the Archdiocese of Chicago related to the alleged abuse. His attorney said he has represented at least four other alleged victims of Holihan, who receive settlements as well.
The archdiocese told WGN News they do not comment on litigation when asked for a statement.
Resources for survivors for clergy abuse are available by visiting snapnetwork.org. The Archdiocese of Chicago’s anonymous abuse hotline is 312-534-8300.
— Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a petition Thursday to compel the Catholic Church to hand over files and answer questions under oath.
Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson says “Washingtonians deserve a public accounting” of how the Catholic Church handles claims of abuse.
By Lewis Kamb
Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced Thursday he’s seeking a court order to force the Seattle Archdiocese to turn over files on priests accused of sexual abuse and make its archbishop answer questions under oath as part of a sweeping probe into how the state’s three Catholic dioceses handled claims of child sex abuse.
Ferguson’s office is looking into “allegations that the Catholic Church has facilitated and attempted to cover up decades of pervasive sexual abuse of children by Church leaders in Washington State,” his office’s petition for a court order states.
Because the Seattle Archdiocese “refuses to cooperate” with civil subpoenas issued by his office last summer and last month, Ferguson went public with his probe Thursday by filing a legal petition in King County Superior Court that seeks an order “to enforce the subpoena,” his office said in a statement.
If obtained, such a court order would legally compel Seattle Archbishop Paul Etienne to appear for a deposition and force Washington’s largest Catholic diocese to produce a long list of internal records, including its trove of secret archives on clergy sexual abuse allegations dating back decades.
“Washingtonians deserve a public accounting of how the Catholic Church handles allegations of child sex abuse, and whether charitable dollars were used to cover it up,” Ferguson said at a press conference. “As a Catholic, I am disappointed the Church refuses to cooperate with our investigation.”
The archdiocese issued a statement Thursday disputing some of Ferguson’s statements as inaccurate and saying it was blindsided by his petition because its lawyers had been cooperating with his office on “a shared legal analysis” for the investigation.
“Today’s press conference was a surprise to us since we welcome this investigation and have been working closely with the Attorney General’s team for months now,” the statement said.
Ferguson’s office said it’s also prepared to seek court orders against the two other Catholic dioceses in Washington, in Yakima and Spokane, if either or both don’t comply with their latest subpoenas later this month.
With Thursday’s action, Ferguson became the 23rd attorney general to publicly announce an investigation into the Catholic Church in his or her state, his office said.
Long called for by sexual abuse survivors and advocacy groups, Washington’s investigation is the first outside probe of the Seattle Archdiocese’s handling of clergy abuse, advocates for survivors say. The archdiocese has publicly identified 83 clergy members “as credibly accused” sex offenders, based on its own private evaluations. But for years, it has resisted advocates’ calls and media requests to release its secret files about clergy abuse or allow independent investigators to inspect them.
Ferguson noted other attorneys general investigations have revealed “dramatically greater numbers” of credible sexual abuse cases than what local dioceses have made public. An investigation in Illinois last year revealed more than four times as many substantiated child sex abuse cases than what Catholic dioceses in the state had divulged, he said.
Ferguson’s announcement also marked the first time he has acknowledged the existence of his investigation, which has been active since at least July.
In February, his office declined to confirm or deny the probe after a group of anti-clergy abuse activists held a press conference to contend that he was hiding the investigation from the public.
The announcement from Ferguson, a Democrat who is running for governor, came two days after NBC News pressed his office to disclose copies of the subpoenas that a reporter requested under Washington’s Public Records Act in March. Without confirming whether they existed, the attorney general’s office delayed its disclosure for more than two months by contending it was still searching for records.
Ferguson’s subpoenas, made public for the first time this week and shared with NBC News late Wednesday, clarify the legal underpinning for the probe. The first subpoena cites his office’s authority to “investigate transactions and relationships of trustees and other persons” under Washington’s Charitable Trust Act, which regulates certain tax-exempt corporations and entities that hold charitable assets in trust.
A civil subpoena has never been used in Washington to investigate a religious organization, according to a legal analysis provided to Ferguson’s office and obtained by NBC News.
Ferguson’s approach is similar to one that New York Attorney General Leticia James used in 2020 to sue the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, based on state civil laws regulating charities. James’ suit led to a landmark settlement in 2022.
Ferguson’s first set of subpoenas to Washington’s Catholic dioceses each include a cover letter dated July 26, signed by him and sent separately to Etienne, Yakima Bishop Joseph Tyson and the Rev. Victor Blazovich, the vicar of finance for Spokane’s bishop.
Ferguson’s letter contends that while Washington’s Charitable Trust Act exempts religious organizations, “the exclusion does not apply in the context of child sexual abuse, a heinous violation with no connection to religion or an entity’s religious status.”
The accompanying subpoenas list demands and instructions for each diocese to produce more than 20 categories of records, including all reports about sexual abuse allegations made against priests and other clergy members, employees and volunteers since Jan. 1, 1940.
The records demanded include those containing allegations against priests and others whom the dioceses already have publicly identified as “credibly accused” sexual abusers, as well as those they have not. The subpoenas also demand the dioceses to turn over communications with the Vatican about sexual abuse claims, and records showing church policies for compensating victims who alleged sexual abuse and accounting for any such payments that have been made.
All three dioceses had initially been given until Aug. 25 to comply with the first subpoenas, the records show.
“The dioceses only responded with information that was already public. They did not fully respond to the subpoena,” Ferguson’s office said in its statement.
Ferguson’s office also released copies of a second set of “amended subpoenas” that were issued last month to the three dioceses. Each includes demands for production of all previously identified records, plus five additional categories of records mostly about finances and accounting.
The Seattle Archdiocese had been given until May 10 to comply with Ferguson’s latest subpoena but notified the office this week that it objects to the subpoena and would not be complying, according to the attorney general’s office.
The deadline for the Yakima and Spokane dioceses to comply with their latest subpoenas is May 22, the records show.
Spokane’s diocese said in a statement Thursday that it has nothing more to publicly divulge since a Chapter 11 bankruptcy case in 2004 “clearly revealed how the Diocese of Spokane dealt with all historic cases of sexual abuse.”
A statement from Yakima’s diocese separately challenged Ferguson’s subpoenas as invalid and unconstitutional, adding “there are already many public resources available for the information being sought.”
“We cannot publicize everything in our records, however, to respect the privacy and confidentiality rights of, among others, both victims and falsely accused clergy,” the Yakima Diocese’s statement added. “And so, we will vigorously assert our First Amendment rights.”
1 of 3 | Even the pope suggested it’s time to let gay couples live in peace. But another local Catholic outfit, St. Luke School in Shoreline, is ousting a lesbian teacher for the crime of getting engaged.
Sometimes a news story seems so behind the times that I find myself double-checking the date. As if maybe it’s one of those items that’s still bouncing around the internet from another decade.
You’re still at this, local Catholics? Still ousting gay employees, in the Seattle area, in 2024?
The news is indeed from this week, with the story that a kindergarten teacher at St. Luke School in Shoreline is not having her teaching contract renewed for next year because she’s gay and getting married.
“Father Brad does not approve of my upcoming marriage and feels it is best for the St. Luke community if I no longer teach at St. Luke,” the teacher, Karen Pala, said in an email to kindergarten parents. (A copy was forwarded to me by a parent.)
“Father Brad” refers to Brad Hagelin, the parish priest.
Fr. Brad Hagelin
“This news has been extremely difficult for me,” Pala went on. “I am a faithful practicing Catholic and I was ready to spend the next 30 years of my career at St. Luke.”
Predictably — because this is what happens every time local religious schools do this — many parents responded with anger. They said driving out the teacher is mean and discriminatory in spirit, even if it isn’t against the letter of the law. It reminds me of when Kennedy Catholic High School in Burien ousted two gay teachers in the middle of the 2019-20 school year for the crime of getting engaged — touching off schoolwide protests.
“It’s a real shock, because this isn’t what St. Luke’s represents to a lot of folks,” one current parent there, Nick Beyer, told me. “It’s a liberal, accepting place — or so we thought.”
“Has the diocese not learned from its history?” wondered Gary Johnson, a St. Luke’s alum, writing on a petition set up to protest the teacher’s ouster.
Added a “disheartened” Jennifer Keough, another St. Luke’s alum: “This type of action is what is driving people away from the Catholic Church.”
A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Seattle said they couldn’t talk specifics about a personnel matter. In a statement, Archbishop Paul Etienne did some hemming to go along with some hawing:
“The reality is that we live in a tension,” he said. “After more than a year of study in 2020-2021, the covenant taskforce concluded that there is no clear, consensus for how to apply the covenant clause. … Because there isn’t a single defined answer, we must dialog like Jesus did. This is why the application of our covenant clause is handled at the local level…”
The covenant clause he’s referring to is whether Catholic schools should require teachers or other employees to adhere to a “lifestyle” contract, in which they’re expected to adhere to all church teachings, including in their personal lives. In some parishes, this means teachers can lose their jobs if they enter a same-sex marriage or cohabitate outside of marriage, among other things.
“No one is fired or non-renewed from employment due to their orientation, identity, desires, or ideas,” an archdiocese report on the issue summed up. “Rather, it is the breaking of the covenant through actions, public witness, and lifestyle choices.”
I think that means you can technically be gay, so long as the church feels it can look the other way. Getting married is a public act, with a license, so the teacher’s out.
It’s sort of like the old discredited “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Which even the military ended because it called on gay people to deny or hide their existences.
The church has a right to do this because religious groups are exempt from some parts of anti-discrimination policy. But is it the right thing to do? As the archbishop acknowledges above, the flock seems increasingly skeptical.
“This is a shameful hypocrisy and a contradiction to the message of love and tolerance that characterizes the Catholic faith,” wrote Forest Hoag, a Seattle U grad. “I am embarrassed to even hear about this.”
Beyer, who has a son at St. Luke, said it feels most tone-deaf coming right after the pope himself said it was OK to bless same-sex couples. That doesn’t mean the church endorses the marriages, let alone performs them. But the people involved are simply loving one another, the pope said. They don’t deserve to be punished.
“That’s the ultimate big boss saying it’s OK, that we should move past this,” Beyer said. “So shouldn’t it be OK in Seattle?”
This is what I wonder every time another gay employee is run out of a job in the name of religion, just for being.
Discrimination against gays and lesbians was banned here 18 years ago. Don’t ask, don’t tell ended 13 years ago. Same-sex marriage has been the law here for 12. Given all that progress, all those years ago, shouldn’t we be better than this by now?
On a recent, sunny afternoon, 18 people gathered at a center for older adults in the West Village for a unique Sunday Mass.
The Rev. Anne Tropeano, an ordained female priest known as Father Anne, led the Catholic service. The homily, which was delivered by a layperson instead of a deacon or priest, criticized Pope Francis’ statements last month on transgender identity.
The cantor referred to God with female pronouns when singing. Communion was given to all willing participants, not just baptized Catholics.
The group, the Metro New York chapter of the national organization Call to Action, was hosting its first in-person meeting since 2019.
Call to Action has about 20,000 members nationwide. Its Metro New York Chapter, which has around 1,600 email subscribers, advocates for progressive politics within the Church locally. In New York, the group lobbied to pass the Child Victims Act, citing abuse by priests.
Although their Sunday Mass wouldn’t pass muster with the Vatican, it represents the kind of Catholic Church that Call to Action hopes to see one day: one that advocates for all marginalized people, openly welcomes gay and transgender parishioners, and encourages female leadership.
For supporters, this argument isn’t just moral, it’s also practical. As Catholic parishes continue to merge and shutter amid low attendance, progressive activists emphasize that broader inclusivity would be a win-win.
The Archdiocese of New York declined to comment on Call to Action, waning parish membership, and progressive practices at some Catholic churches in New York City, but said it generally does not exclude any demographic.
“All are welcome,” the archdiocese’s Director of Communications Joseph Zwilling wrote in an email. “The Church here in New York and around the world has sought to reach those who feel alienated or cut off from the faith, and will continue to do so.”
‘I’m exactly like a male priest, except I’m female’
Tropeano, 49, is a bit of a celebrity among progressive-minded Catholics. Call to Action Metro New York invited her to lead its annual meeting, even though she’s based in New Mexico. She made the most of the trip, speaking at Queens’ Ridgewood Presbyterian Church the same weekend.
Before Mass at the Call to Action meeting, her talk drew on the Easter season, using Christ’s resurrection as a metaphor for personal and social reform.
Father Anne
In an interview before the event, Tropeano said “an encounter with God” she had when she was 29 moved her to explore faith matters from New Age spirituality to Evangelical Christianity.
She earned her master’s degree in divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California, in 2017, and watched from the sidelines as her male peers prepared to be ordained.
Tropeano pointed out that for a woman to become a priest, “it’s considered a crime as serious as the sexual abuse of a child by a male priest, but they’re not excommunicated.” (In those cases, canon law recommends “just penalties, not excluding” firing the offender from the clergy.)
“Being excommunicated means you can’t work for the Church, you can’t volunteer for the Church, you can’t receive any of the sacraments,” she said. “So I’m not allowed to receive the Eucharist. I won’t receive the Christian burial. I mean, I am so Catholic that I became a priest, and that’s how the institution treats me.”
Though she broke the Church’s laws by seeking ordination, Tropeano otherwise makes a point of respecting the institution. “So many people have terrible experiences in the institutional Church,” she said. “Mine was incredible. So I think that’s part of why I have a call within a call, which is Church reform. I see how good it can be when it’s operating with integrity.”
Unlike many other female priests within the women’s ordination movement, Tropeano wears the clerical collar, practices celibacy and leads her services by the book — with the exception that anyone can receive Communion.
“I’m exactly like a male priest, except I’m female,” she said. “That’s the only difference.”
Back at the center for older adults, the group silently reflected on Tropeano’s lecture before Mass. One woman sitting at the front wore a button in honor of the occasion. It read: “Ordain women or stop baptizing them.”
More than a ‘lavender mafia’
Among the crowd at the West Village event was Theo Swinford, a 26-year-old Borough Park resident who grew up devoutly Catholic near Phoenix, Arizona.
Swinford, who uses they/them pronouns, attended a Catholic university to study theology, where they read Catholic books and listened to Catholic music and podcasts in their free time. Swinford, who has been openly gay since 16, did their best at that time to make peace with the idea of lifelong celibacy and ignore their burgeoning nonbinary identity.
“I spent more and more time just kind of miserable, arguing with myself over whether or not it was realistic for me to live my life that way,” Swinford said in a phone interview. “The straw that broke the camel’s back was when the Pennsylvania grand jury report came out.”
Theo Swinford, in Brooklyn.
That 2018 report, which detailed decades of abuse and coverups within the Catholic Church, found credible sex abuse allegations against 301 priests. Swinford expected their favorite scholars and pundits to pause and reflect on the Church’s wrongdoings. Instead, those people blamed homosexuality, and even referred to a “lavender mafia” at work within the Church.
Swinford took a break from Catholicism for nearly four years after that and explored other churches and religions. “But there was always something about Catholicism that really, like, tugged at me,” they said. “It’s just so much a part of who I am.”
Although Swinford had not been to a Catholic Mass of any kind in years, they decided to attend the Call to Action event because of the group’s explicit pro-LGBTQ+ advocacy and their curiosity about Tropeano.
“The thing I’ve missed the most is not being able to receive the Eucharist,” Swinford said in an interview after the event. “And so getting to receive the Eucharist from a woman priest, who is an outcast in her own way, because she’s also not accepted by the Church, was a really powerful experience.”
Reforming Mass, just west of Union Square
Many members of Call to Action are also parishioners at the Church of St. Francis Xavier on West 15th Street, a Roman Catholic church known for its inclusivity.
Inside the Church of St. Francis Xavier, west of Union Square.
St. Francis Xavier, which the Rev. Kenneth Boller has led since 2019, has hosted robust groups for gay- and lesbian-identifying Catholics since the 1990s. A group called “The Women Who Stayed” has been working with clergy to adapt services and Scripture to include more gender-neutral language for God.
“Everybody has fundamental aspirations and rights, and you learn how to work together to achieve them,” said Boller, a Queens native who has been a priest for almost 49 years, in a phone interview.
Kenneth Boller, at The Church of St. Francis Xavier, west of Union Square.
Although the Church of St. Francis Xavier is recognized by the archdiocese, it still has a reputation for unorthodoxy among many practicing Catholics. Swinford said peers once warned them to stay away from the parish, saying it was “not in line with Church teaching.”
Stephanie Samoy, 60, is a member of The Women Who Stayed and St. Francis Xavier’s lively Catholic Lesbians group. Samoy first attended the church in 2001, and she and her wife were married there. Samoy came out as a lesbian in Tucson, Arizona, during the 1980s, and said she never imagined she could feel so much love in a church.
“When I first got there, I just bawled,” she said in a phone interview. “It broke me and I was ready to be broken. My mom came to New York one day, and we went to Mass, and I was crying again that my mom was here and she could experience this.”
The exterior of the Church of St. Francis Xavier, near Union Square.
But even at a church like St. Francis Xavier, progressive parishioners are always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Rosemarie Sauerzopf, 73, and her wife, Paula Acuti, 76, are also members of Catholic Lesbians, and Sauerzopf is vice president of Call to Action Metro New York. The two were married at St. Francis Xavier in 2004.
“All this can change tomorrow if we get a new pastor who’s not friendly,” Sauerzopf said. “My parish is an anomaly. It’s an oasis.”
Timothy Cardinal Dolan is in no rush to discuss efforts to change the child abuse law.
By Brendan J. Lyons
A state appellate court delivered a devastating blow to the Archdiocese of New York in a unanimous decision Tuesday that found the Catholic organization’s longtime insurer can move forward with its case challenging whether its policies covered claims for systemic child sexual abuse that may have been enabled and covered up by church leaders for decades.
Chubb Insurers argued that it has no duty to indemnify or represent the archdiocese in hundreds of lawsuits filed by individuals who were sexually abused by church employees, and that the archdiocese was not providing information that would allow the insurer to properly assess those claims.
The ruling rocked advocates and attorneys who have supported New York’s Child Victims Act and Adult Survivors Act, which had temporarily lifted the statute of limitations to allow alleged victims of sexual abuse to file once time-barred claims against their abusers or the institutions that harbored them.
“Today’s appellate court ruling represents the absolute opposite of the spirit of the Child Victims Act — and puts virtually every single Child Victims Act case covered by an insurance company at risk,” said David Catalfamo, executive director of the Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation, which bills itself as an independent alliance of survivors of child sex abuse.
“The entire insurance industry exists because any development could be theoretically expected or intended — people with flood insurance only buy it because a flood is expected,” Catalfamo added. “If upheld, the appellate court’s alarming ruling could allow insurers to deny claims to policyholders beyond sexual abuse cases — putting virtually anyone with an insurance policy at risk.”
But Chubb Insurers have countered that the archdiocese is making an argument akin to an arsonist burning down their house and then demanding to be paid out on their insurance policy. In court filings, they have asserted that their companies “have no duty to provide insurance coverage” in many of the sex abuse cases and that the Archdiocese of New York “alone must bear the full financial consequences of its criminal behavior.”
They noted that for decades the archdiocese’s clergy and employees raped and molested children entrusted to them in churches, schools and camps. The archdiocese hid those crimes, the insurer said, and “protected the perpetrators, and in many cases, punished and stigmatized those victims brave enough to come forward.”
The company issued a statement following Tuesday’s ruling by the state Appellate Division’s First Department noting the five-judge panel had rejected the archdiocese’s arguments and the lower court judge’s decision that had derailed their pursuit of a declaratory judgment.
The appellate court said the insurer’s complaint “sufficiently alleges that recovery would fall outside the scope of plaintiffs’ duties to defend and indemnify if the archdiocese had knowledge of its employees’ conduct or propensities.”
Cynthia S. LaFave, an Albany attorney whose firm represents nearly 100 claimants who have filed Child Victims Act lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, said the decision issued Tuesday was not unexpected and is far short of a victory for the insurers.
“I think the insurance companies will try to make a lot of noise about it,” LaFave said. “But it’s simply one of the steps in litigation. … It just means that they get to continue their case, and in the end, each of these cases will be heard on its own facts.”
She said that it’s likely most of the cases will be subject to coverage by the insurers.
The appellate court’s ruling came less than a month after the Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation sent a letter to state Sen. Neil Breslin and Assemblyman David Weprin, who chair their chambers’ insurance committees, requesting that they convene public hearings and examine whether the insurers are complying with the intent of the New York’s Child Victims Act.
The outreach by the coalition, whose members also include attorneys representing victims of clergy sex abuse, was unfolding as the legal battle over the obligation to provide coverage for the abuse perpetrated by priests and others was unfolding in the case filed in state Supreme Court last year by Chubb Insurers against the Archdiocese of New York.
“Given the gravity of these issues and their far-reaching implications for survivors across New York state, we respectfully request that the insurance committees of both the New York state Senate and Assembly, under your esteemed leadership, hold hearings to examine the insurance industry’s practices in relation to the CVA,” the coalition wrote.
The coalition claims the insurers have used their strategy in multiple jurisdictions, including cases involving Rockefeller University Hospital, Boy Scouts of America and school districts across New York.
The Archdiocese of New York is affiliated with or operates dozens of churches, schools and other entities that are facing thousands of claims under both the Child Victims Act and the Adult Survivors Act.
Chubb Insurers issued policies to the Archdiocese of New York beginning in 1956, but says they were intended to cover accidents, and not damages for “bodily injury that the insured expected or intended.” In 1986, Chubb Insurers began adding sexual molestation exclusions in its excess policies and, in 1988, to the primary policies.
James R. Marsh, an attorney who is a trustee of the survivors coalition and whose law firm specializes in child sex abuse litigation, told the Times Union last month that the standoff with the insurance companies has been compounded by the fact many Catholic dioceses have filed for bankruptcy in the face of thousands of Child Victims Act claims.
In those cases, dioceses end up paying millions of dollars in legal fees and insurers “have less of an incentive to come to the table because they know that by waiting out as long as they can, the situation is only going to get worse and worse,” Marsh said. “When you have an insurer that’s unwilling to come to the table to make good on these claims, the result is the diocese and the institutions go into bankruptcy.”
Marsh said the situation has been exacerbated by mergers and acquisitions of insurance companies, with investors often reluctant to pay coverage for claims that would draw down their assets.
In court filings, the Chubb Insurers have noted they have been continuing to defend both the Archdiocese of New York and its affiliated parishes and schools, but they have also sought more details on the organizations’ handling of sexual abuse cases, including details of any criminal conduct and the systematic efforts to cover it up.
Investigations and litigation have revealed that many dioceses hid sexual abuse cases from police and the public. Two years ago, the Times Union reported that former Albany Bishop Howard J. Hubbard, who died last year, admitted in a deposition that the diocese systematically concealed incidents of child sexual abuse and did not alert law enforcement agencies when they discovered it. He said their actions were, in part, intended to avoid scandal and preserve “respect for the priesthood.”
Priests and other employees accused of raping and abusing children were frequently sent to church-run treatment facilities and later returned to ministry with no notification to congregations. They also were routinely transferred to different dioceses when abuse was discovered, only to strike again.
The appellate court’s decision Tuesday reversed, in part, a December ruling by state Supreme Court Justice Suzanne J. Adams, who had rejected Chubb Insurers’ arguments. Adams noted that during an oral argument in the case, one of Chubb’s attorneys conceded that sexual abuse is “bodily injury.”
“Here, the Chubb Insurers simply do not have a cause of action,” Adams wrote. “The plain language of the insurance policies at issue covers bodily injury and negligence as alleged in the underlying (Child Victims Act) actions … and the complaint sets forth no facts that would support a declaratory judgment that the Chubb Insurers have no obligation to indemnify, and consequently no obligation to defend, ‘each of the 2,770 CVA-related lawsuits (they) are defending in which the (archdiocese) has or may have liability.”
In court filings, Chubb’s attorneys have argued that “when an insured perpetrates, tolerates, and hides a vast pattern of horrific child abuse across decades, no insurable ‘accident’ that occurred, and the (archdiocese) has the burden of proving facts showing that it is otherwise entitled to coverage under any of its insurance policies.”
