MINNESOTA LEGISLATURE 2002: More Time Sought To Report Abuse
By Rick Linsk, for Pioneer Press
Originally published in the Pioneer Press, April 1, 2002
Dale Scheffler thought he had justice within his grasp—a $1.1 million jury verdict against a pedophile priest he said molested him 15 years earlier and the Catholic Church officials who had retained the troubled cleric.
Scheffler's 1996 victory was short-lived, however. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that he waited too long to sue, tossing out his case and others like it. Similar lawsuits ground to a halt.
Then came this year's clergy sexual abuse scandals emerging across the nation. The time was ripe, victims' advocates believed, to ask lawmakers to make it easier to sue. But their effort has set off a battle in the waning days of the current legislative session, with religious organizations furiously lobbying against the proposal.
Church forces are rattling legislators with visions of rampant lawsuits against schools, hospitals and other institutions whose employees committed abuses long ago. Victims' advocates accuse the religious lobbyists of distortion and scare tactics. The result, both sides say, could be a showdown on the House floor as soon as Tuesday.
At issue is Minnesota's statute of limitations on civil actions alleging sexual abuse. The law, enacted in 1989, says that victims must file their lawsuit within six years of the time they "knew or had reason to know that the injury was caused by the sexual abuse."
The law was crafted to protect people who realize years later that they were abused, a concept known as "delayed discovery," said Tammi Larsen, executive director of the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault, an advocacy organization.
"For a variety of reasons, including that the perpetrator is often someone they trust, it can take years to figure out that what happened to them really was abuse," she said. That realization can follow problems including alcohol or drug abuse, depression and suicide attempts.
For Dale Scheffler, counseling triggered his claims that he was abused at age 14 by Father Robert Kapoun, known as the "Polka Padre" for his use of polka music at Mass. Scheffler sued Kapoun and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Testimony established that the archdiocese had retained the troubled priest after he admitted years earlier to sexual relations with male youths.
But in the mid-1990s, a series of decisions by the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected the notion of delayed discovery. The key case was Blackowiak vs. Kemp, in which Mark Blackowiak sued over his abuse by a school counselor 20 years earlier, at age 11. The high court declared that a "reasonable person" who is abused knows immediately that he or she was injured.
Scheffler's lawyer, Jeffrey Anderson, who has filed nearly 500 clergy-related sex abuse lawsuits, said last week that the court essentially ended sexual abuse lawsuits against clergy and religious institutions in Minnesota.
In February, advocates began their drive to get around the ruling. Peg Larsen, a former Republican state representative from Lakeland and now a lobbyist for the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault, persuaded state legislators in both major parties to sponsor bills that would allow sexual abuse lawsuits to be filed within six years of the plaintiff's discovery "of both the injury and the causal relationship between the injury and the abuse."
Said Republican Rep. John Tuma, a lawyer from Northfield and sponsor of the House bill: "An awful lot of young people who are abused internalize it and don't really understand it until the future."
Church forces raised a host of objections, and the measure missed the deadline for bills to get out of committee. Among organizations lobbying against the bill was the Minnesota Religious Council, a coalition of church groups including the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Daniel J. Connolly, a lawyer with the Minneapolis firm of Faegre & Benson and a lobbyist for the Minnesota Religious Council, said the group is not trying to block lawsuits against churches or church officials. But churches should be shielded from court action in cases where the church officials were not aware of the abuse, he said. Churches also fear the difficulty of defending themselves against lawsuits many years later.
"The churches are not against victims or victims' rights," Connolly said. "We just want any lawsuit to go forward in a time period where one can investigate the claims and find out what the truth is."
The religious council has recruited other organizations to its side by warning that they too could be targeted for abuse lawsuits. During Wednesday's House session, for example, the Minnesota School Boards Association distributed a letter on the House floor opposing the measure. "Everyone in the world has decided they don't want this to happen," grumbled Peg Larsen, the advocates' lobbyist.
With lawmakers scheduled to return this week, proponents are still planning a last-ditch effort to pass the bill. They are also floating compromise versions that the religious groups might agree to, pointing to other states that have loosened their statutes of limitations. Connecticut is considering a bill allowing people to file civil claims until they reach the age of 48.
"We would prefer to go together with the churches to the Capitol on something like this," said advocate Tammi Larsen (who is not related to lobbyist Peg Larsen). "But we're going to keep working on it. We're going to keep doing whatever we can to make it happen, whether it's this session or the next session."
