Pennsylvania grand jury report on Catholic priests' alleged sexual abuses.

Louisiana’s state supreme court on Wednesday reversed its decision to strike down a law that allowed child-molestation victims to file civil lawsuits over long-ago abuse.

The decision affects all alleged abusers and their enablers – but it is particularly significant for Louisiana’s Roman Catholic church, which is facing hundreds of decades-old claims of child molestation in various state and federal courts.

The state supreme court’s earlier decision would have given the New Orleans church leverage to settle about 500 such claims for pennies on the dollar.


Instead, those claims all have standing to proceed under a 2021 law allowing what is known as a “lookback window”, retroactively eliminating statutes of limitations for filing such claims.

The 2021 lookback window, reinforced unanimously by the state’s legislature in 2022, was set to expire on 14 June. But the reversal by the supreme court also means a new law, which the Louisiana legislature passed in May to extend the lookback window another three years to 2027, is also constitutional.

The Louisiana state senator sponsoring the extended lookback window, Jay Luneau, cheered Wednesday’s reversal. “We’ve seen … a lot of religious organizations where they’ve covered up this abuse, and this is going to send a clear message that you can run, but you can’t hide,” he said.……

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-abuse-catholic-church?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other