An Ohio toddler was killed by her mother,[1] despite child protection workers’ awareness of previous instances of abuse. Ohio courts must hold that agency and its workers responsible for their failures. As outlined in CHILD USA’s amicus curiae brief, found...
Watch This Movie about Richard Sipe
I just saw the movie Sipe: Sex, Lies, and the Priesthood. It is about Richard Sipe, an expert on the Catholic clergy’s abuse of children. Sipe was a psychologist and a former priest, who used his expertise to help children and to try to hold the church accountable for its misconduct. This moving...
The Two Roads to Justice for Pennsylvania’s Child Sex Abuse Victims in 2021
Before joining the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government and starting CHILD USA five years ago, I was a constitutional law professor at Cardozo School of Law with a chair in public law. Before that, I had the honor and pleasure of clerking for Judge Edward R....
Learning from Roy Mouton’s Truthful Novel, In God’s House
“I had sex with boys almost every day I was a priest (161).” Those words described the actions of the priest, Father Francis Dubois, that the fictional lawyer, Renon Chattelrault, was asked to defend in this case from the early 1980s. At the same time, a “ten-year-old child victim was bringing a...
Reading Dyan Elliott’s The Corrupter of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal, and the Medieval Clergy (U. of Pennsylvania 2020)
You might be reluctant to read this new book. It is very scholarly, written by Professor Elliott, an eloquent professor of medieval history. Its title—The Corrupter of Boys—might scare you away from reading a book whose name suggests something terrible. But its dedication, “to all those, living or...
Death of Roger Goudy – President and CEO of AAU
Introduction Sarah Powers Barnhard is a former elite youth athlete who was repeatedly sexually assaulted by Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) coach Rick Butler. In 2018, Sarah and five others filed a class-action lawsuit against Butler for sexual abuse. In response to the sexual abuse allegations...
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ Clergy Sexual Abuse Lawsuit is a Model for Other States
In 2002, the nation was rocked by the Boston Globe’s publication of its bombshell report exposing the intentional coverup of child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston. Our country was forced to reckon with the Catholic Church’s contribution to the national child sex abuse crisis that...
The REAL Educational Neglect: Reflections of a Former Teacher
CHILD USA has recently adopted a new initiative, ending Educational Neglect. Educational Neglect is defined as “the failure of a parent or caregiver to enroll a child of mandatory school age in school or to provide appropriate homeschooling or needed special education training.” Of course,...
Arizona’s Window is Closing on December 30, 2020
The revival window which gives all survivors of child sex abuse in Arizona more time to file lawsuits for their abuse is closing soon. Survivors who are currently over age 30 only have until December 30, 2020 to file their previously expired civil claims, and then unfortunately, their claims will...