By Carina Nixon, September 25, 2024, Senior Staff Attorney at CHILD USA. Prior to CHILD USA, Carina worked as an Attorney-Advisor for the Small Business Administration’s Office of Disaster Assistance, where she helped small business owners recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, she...
Rita Swan, who passed away on October 4, 2022, was a giant in establishing children’s civil rights to health and medical care. We at CHILD USA will miss her dearly.
This blog was written by CHILD USA CEO and Founder Professor Marci Hamilton and published in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas on April 29, 2024. “Parental rights” are all the rage now in some quarters. But when parents gain rights, who loses them? Children. Remember the Dark Ages in America for...
A New Orleans attorney who represents victims of clerical sexual abuse was fined $400,000 by a federal bankruptcy court judge after he alerted a local Catholic high school that a priest who worked there, Paul Hart, sexually abused a teenage student at another institution in the past.
by Leslie C. Griffin* I am waiting for the Maine Supreme Court to decide a case about sexual abuse and the statute of limitations [SOL].1 Statutes of limitations are rules that explain when the courts are open or closed to victims of abuse. I am particularly interested in the implications of that...
by Leslie C. Griffin* The abuse of children by Catholic clergy has a long history in the State of Maine. The Beginning Some initial news about Catholic Maine abuse was released when the Maine Supreme Court ordered it. In Blethen Maine Newspapers v. Maine, 871 A.2d 523 (Me. 2005), the Supreme Court...
by Rob Jenner Jenner Law, P.C. Baltimore, Maryland Last month a dedicated team of lawyers presented oral argument before the Maryland Supreme Court in support of the Maryland Child Victims Act (CVA) of 2023. The heart of the legal battle concerned the statutory language that existed in the 2017...
by Leslie C. Griffin* This post will tell you about them. New Hampshire has one Catholic Diocese of Manchester, which includes many schools and parishes. New Hampshire has changed its statute of limitations [SOL] for sexual abuse several times. The SOL determines when your time begins and ends to...
by Leslie C. Griffin* There is one Roman Catholic diocese in Vermont, the Diocese of Burlington.1 On September 30, 2024, Kevin O’Connor reported that the diocese had gone into bankruptcy, becoming the fortieth Catholic organization to do so.2 In the bankruptcy papers, Bishop John McDermott of the...