Child Abuse Claims Have Franciscans Contemplating Bankruptcy

Santa Barbara Attorney Argues Bankruptcy Process Would Deny Survivors Opportunity to Confront Their Abusers Under Oath

A number of Franciscan priests assigned to Santa Barbara’s now-closed St. Anthony’s Seminary (above) and Old Mission Santa Barbara have been implicated in the sexual abuse of children over the years. | Credit: Eugene Zelenko

In anticipation of the significant legal damage that could be inflicted by at least 93 pending child abuse lawsuits filed in the past three years, the California Franciscan Friars — an order to which the Old Mission Santa Barbara belongs — is now giving serious thought to Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

“We have been overwhelmed by the number of cases filed, both in terms of the human cost and in our ability to fairly compensate all the abuse survivors,” explained Provincial Minister Fr. David Gaa. “The reality is, litigation costs and the potential liability will exceed our limited financial resources.”

“The bankruptcy process tends to be cold and makes survivors feel they are little more than a faceless claimant number,” Santa Barbara attorney Tim Hale stated. “The Franciscans should be ashamed.” | Credit: Courtesy

Under the bankruptcy process, Gaa noted, all the claims will be evaluated in the same action, and litigants will not find themselves in a race with one another for compensation and damages. The bankruptcy process, Gaa added, tends to move more swiftly; survivors will be settled with sooner. Bankruptcy judges, Gaa added, can pressure insurance companies to honor policies they wrote, thus generating greater revenues from which survivors can be compensated.

Attorney Tim Hale, who represents plaintiffs in eight of the 93 cases, countered that under the bankruptcy scenario, survivors will be effectively denied their day in court, where they can confront their abusers under oath. They will also be denied, he said, the opportunity to confront high-ranking Franciscan administrators and demand why they covered up the predations of frontline priests. He also noted that the bankruptcy process does not allow for discovery the way civil litigation does, excepting, of course, for one’s assets.

“The bankruptcy process tends to be cold and makes survivors feel they are little more than a faceless claimant number,” Hale stated. “The Franciscans should be ashamed.”

Several of California’s most prominent archbishops — in San Francisco, Oakland and San Diego, for example — have already declared bankruptcy. They all cited the flood of cases that would never have been filed had the state legislature not extended the statute of limitations in child sex abuse cases by three years in 2019.

Gaa said the Franciscans were the first order to address the issue of child abuse and emotionally, not just financially. “I am deeply saddened by the sinful acts committed and the damage caused to abuse survivors — then only children — who put their trust in the friars,” Gaa wrote in a prepared statement.