its obvious they are a continuing criminal organization.
how many pedophile rings will it take until people realize the church is an evil organization
the leaders should be locked away.
the church property should be seized and sold off to pay the victime.
the vatican itself should be ostracized as a criminal organization and their ambassadors evicted from every country.
the right like to accuse islam of being evil but here we have a church that repeatedly covers up the sexual abuse of children. and does nothing about it until its exposed.
i wonder how much the cathederal in philly could be sold for…
Unfortunately, a personal injury claim such as sexual abuse does not qualify as a “predicate act” to file a criminal Federal RICO suit. The Federal RICO laws would first need to be amended. Also, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which provides certain unique legal protections to churches would need to be modified.
There is the potential for a huge class action civil suit against the Catholic Church, with the potential for a judgement in the billions of dollars. There is quite a lot of Catholic property in the United States on which the victim class could move.
The various Catholic Universities and Colleges in the Untied States, such as Notre Dame. Catholic Hospitals. There is Catholic property from dioceses that have been closed in recent years. Most likely, victims would be required to go after those properties first and most likely judgments would be satisfied by taking on a fraction of those above properties.
While I don’t agree with him on all of his comments, I do think the Catholic Church needs to cough up some dough to the victims. A reasonable civil judgement would do this.
I agree. I wouldn’t have any problems with an unreasonable judgement. This stuff has been going on forever and the Church still tries to cover it up.
While RiCO does cover obscenity, the priest in question were generally making and trading the photo’s without an income stream being involved.
More importantly, while the priests were using their positions to get close to victims, they were not involving the church itself in the initial crime of pedophilia.
The church’s crime came later, when the abuse was discovered. Instead of reporting the incidents to police, the church covered it up. A cover-up does not fall under RICO.
The church would have had to have been actively collaborating with the priests in their initial crimes and obviously the church was not doing that.
The church should be civilly liable for not promptly reporting abuse as it was discovered and not promptly defrocking guilty clergy.
i have no problem with them being bankrupted instead of facing RICO.
hit the church with a couple 10’s of billions in fines.
seize the cathedrals and sell them.
and revoke the tax free status of any diocese that has shown a pattern of coverups
I didn’t think it was a crime to not report a crime to authorities with the exception of specific people who are deemed to be mandated reporters? Looked it up, apparently as of now 18 states have broadened mandated reporting to all professions.
i did a little reading.
it doesnt matter if the photos were traded without an income stream being generated.
the courts have ruled there doesnt have to be a profit motive.
and if the church covered up the crime that could be considered wire fraud.
they may not be able to get the church on criminal rico violations but they could probably get them on civil RICO with its triple damages. (IMHO)
not the vatican but the US branch could be bankrupted.
lets say they get hit with a billion dollar judgement. or more.
the diocese could be forced to file for BK and could in theory have their property sold off to pay the judgement. a diocese filing BK has happened repeatedly for sex abuse. a big enough judgement and the diocese could have to liquidate its assets
A judgement would be placed against the Catholic Church in the United States. The Church would have discretion in picking and choosing which assets to hand over. As long as they move to satisfy the judgement in the required time frame, the plaintiffs can’t move to seize a particular asset.
a big enough judgement…
say 10-20B or so.
1000 victims.
20 M/victim is 20B
and i believe each dicoese can be considered a separate company.
lets say philly gets hit with a multi billion judgement.
and they transfered a priest to washington where he committed more abuse
washington gets hit with a judgement.
then orlando since the transfered a priest there.
