The Louisiana Supreme Court has sent a priest sex abuse case back to the Third Circuit Court of Appeal.
The Diocese is appealing a trial court's ruling that allowed a case involving allegations of abuse in the 1960's to move forward. Six of the high court's seven justices granted the writ of the Diocese of Lafayette, but only in order to instruct the Third Circuit to properly respond to the appeal.
At issue is a Louisiana law that took effect in 2021, and gave child abuse victims a three-year window to file suit against anyone involved in their abuse, regardless of how long ago the abuse happened. If anyone was convicted in criminal court, there's no time limit at all under the new law.
Previous law allowed people to file suit for ten years after their 18th birthday.
The Third Circuit denied an appeal by the Diocese of Lafayette, and simply wrote that no errors were found in the trial court's ruling. But that's not enough, according to the state Supreme Court.
"If the court determines the 2021 amendment has the effect of reviving the prescribed cause of action in this case, it should then address relator’s alternative argument that such a result would unconstitutionally impair relator’s vested right in the defense of liberative prescription," the Supreme Court wrote.
The suit in question, filed by a man identified as "Sam Doe" in the public record, was filed against the Diocese over a sexual assault that took place in the 1960s. The man says he was an "obedient child" and a "devout Catholic" when, the suit alleges, he was sexually assaulted by a priest, Fr. Stanley Begnaud.
At the time of the assault Begnaud was pastor of the church in Berwick that the boy and his family attended, the suit alleges. It calls Begnaud "a diseased pedophile" who was never removed from ministry despite numerous complaints, and despite being identified as a "known pedophile" in diocese records. Begnaud retired and died at the age of 63 in the 1990s, the suit alleges.
Sam Doe was under the care of a therapist when he finally became aware in 2019 that he had been sexually assaulted, and that his abuser was Begnaud, the suit alleges.
The suit was filed in 2020.
The diocese's response was to file an exception, alleging that the suit had to be dismissed because the plaintiff's claim had prescribed - in other words, the plaintiff had taken too long to file the lawsuit.
But after a hearing in January, the judge denied that exception. In her reasons, the judge wrote that a Louisiana law that gave sexual assault victims a three-year window to file suits in connection with incidents that happened years ago. This suit falls under that law, the judge decided.
That was the ruling in which the Third Circuit found no errors.
