Last Friday, for the second time in just two weeks, the Boston Globe Company went toe-to-toe with the most influential spiritual institution in town — the Archdiocese of Boston. The city’s media powerhouse has challenged the Catholic Church’s long-held practice of sealing all court records related to lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by its clergy. On November 30, a Boston Globe request prompted Suffolk Superior Court judge Constance Sweeney to lift a gag order that applied to 86 civil cases pending against John Geoghan — the now-defrocked priest accused of molesting more than 100 children over three decades (see "Cardinal Law, the Church, and Pedophilia," News and Features, March 23). Twenty-five plaintiffs are also suing Bernard Cardinal Law for failing to stop the abuse despite warnings (see "Failure to Act," News and Features, October 4). In reversing the order, Sweeney ruled that thousands of pages of depositions and discovery materials must be made public — an unparalleled decision that the archdiocese is currently appealing.
Last Friday, the Globe had even bigger things in mind than the high-profile Geoghan cases. The newspaper, evidently hot on the trail of the archdiocese and pedophile priests, filed an amicus curiae brief at Suffolk Superior Court in the hopes of lifting impoundment orders on nine civil suits dating as far back as 1991. Each case had been settled, and the parties had agreed to seal the records forever. But that didn’t stop the paper — or, more specifically, the lawyer representing the Globe, Anthony Fuller of the Boston law firm Bingham Dana — from appearing in court December 14 to argue that assaults on children by clergy members are matters of grave public concern, and that the public therefore has a right to know what’s in those files.
The latest action brought out many of the city’s bigfoot attorneys who handle lawsuits involving sex abuse by clergy. To the 12th-floor courtroom where Suffolk Superior Court judge Ralph Gants presides came Larry Hardoon, whose claim to fame was winning the Fells Acre day-care molestation cases in the 1980s. There was Stephen Lyons, who has gained national recognition for his legal work on pedophile-priest cases. Another prominent attorney, Carmen Durso, also showed up. So did Mitchell Garabedian, who represents the 86 Geoghan victims. On the opposing side, of course, stood Wilson Rogers Jr., the long-time champion of Cardinal Law and the archdiocese.
For the most part, those who represent the victims of pedophile priests voiced no opposition to reversing the imposed ban on their case files. Their only concern, they told Gants that afternoon, was to keep their clients — many of whom have struggled to put the trauma of abuse and the ordeal of litigation behind them — anonymous. Attorneys for the plaintiffs urged the court to respect the victims’ desire for privacy by, say, redacting their names and other identifying information, such as home addresses and phone numbers.
Not surprisingly, Rogers, on behalf of the Church, objected to the Globe’s request. As far as he was concerned, the cases were "resolved in good faith." The plaintiffs themselves had agreed to the confidentiality orders. As Rogers succinctly put it, "I would be unalterably opposed to lifting the impoundments."
But for Judge Gants, it seemed, the crux of the matter came down to balancing the public’s right to know with the victims’ right to privacy. As for any interest in confidentiality the Church might have, well, that didn’t seem to bother Gants. He made it plain that he had pored over the recent decision of his Superior Court colleague, Judge Sweeney, and that the nine suits, in his words, "obviously dealt with issues of public interest. There is no question there."
Whether the Globe will get its way is another question entirely; Gants continued the proceedings until January 24. But the newspaper’s legal actions show one thing: the media giant has finally woken up to one of the biggest stories to hit Boston in years.
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