Author: Dana Aprigliano, Hurwitz Fine P.C.

Extract:
»In late 2008, an Irish businessman was successful in legally preventing sexual assault claims from being brought against him. In explaining why one “victim” should be discredited, the court cited a threat she made against the businessman to make allegations of a sexual nature against him if he did not pay her a sum of money. In particular, she told him that if he did not pay her, she would “have him . . . ’ plastered all over the front of the Evening Herald like those p[e]dophile priests.’ ” Although the businessman was not a priest or, as it would seem, a pedophile, his accuser’s comment speaks to both the notoriety clergy sexual abuse cases had gained over the years and the ubiquity of clergy sexual abuse reports in newspapers distributed globally.
Like Ireland, the United States has had a myriad of clergy sexual abuse cases emerge over the past fifty years. Both Ireland and the United States developed legal systems inspired by that of England. However, unlike the United States’ system, Ireland’s history is tightly interwoven with the Catholic Church and Catholic identity, such that “ The Republic of Ireland for much of the last century was a monocultural society in which the Church was the ultimate arbiter of morality on an assortment of social issues concerning sex and sexuality . . . .” This Article analyzes the ways in which the United States and Ireland converge and diverge in their treatment of criminal cases of clergy sexual abuse. It does so with the aim of exploring how these two countries with fundamentally similar legal systems occasionally differ in their methods of achieving the same goal: justice for victims. It draws on a global overview of clergy sexual abuse scandals and a comparative analysis of individual criminal prosecutions in the United States and Ireland to divine the way in which both countries’ systems are fundamentally two sides of the same coin.« (Source: Article, p. 23-24)

Contents:

	Introduction (p. 23)
	I. Fifty Years of Clergy Sexual Abuse (p. 24)
	II. Criminal Prosecutions (p. 29)
		A. Statutes of Limitations (p. 29)
		B. Corroboration Warnings (p. 30)
		C. Evidentiary Rules and Determinations (p. 32)
		D. Sentencing Considerations: Mitigating Factors (p. 35)
	III. Same System, Fewer Convictions? (p. 37)

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of Ireland | History of the Americas: History of the United States | Catholic Church: Catholic Church in Ireland / Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in Ireland | Catholic Church: Catholic Church in the United States / Catholic Church sex abuse cases in the United States | Sex and the law: Sexual abuse / Catholic Church sexual abuse cases