Ignoring the Elephant In the Room: NPR Spins the Facts In Reporting Bankruptcy of Arch. of San Francisco

Why did the Archdiocese of San Francisco just declare bankruptcy? Well, if you listened to a recent segment on taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR) with host Ailsa Chang and the network's "religion correspondent" Jason DeRose, you were told that the Church faced 500 lawsuits and they were filing bankruptcy to cover up their crimes and short the victims of compensation.

Trotting out an old bigot

And just to underscore its complete lack of objectivity and fairness, NPR turned to one of the most unhinged sources a media outlet could possibly ever turn to, Marci A. Hamilton, an activist professor at the University of Pennsylvania and CEO of her own lawyer-funded pressure group called Child USA.

While Hamilton fashions herself as a legal expert in the area of sex abuse, a scholarly review of a book she wrote on the topic described her work as "poorly executed," "disorganized," "self-contradictory," "dreadful," and "riddled with errors." "No one should cite this book. No one should rely on it for any purpose," the reviewer concluded.

In other words, Hamilton is just a tired, old liberal crank who makes a living suing the Church she hates.

The reality

San Francisco's bankruptcy only happened because California passed "window legislation" in 2019 that opened up a period of three years to allow any fraudster, grifter, and ne'er-do-well to sue the Catholic Church for big bucks, no matter how long ago or crazy the abuse claim. And while NPR did mention the window legislation, it left out the critical details of and the motivation for this legislation. For example:

• California already had a year-long "window" period back in 2003. That legislation led to over $1 billion in payouts by the Church, including the Archdiocese of Los Angeles alone paying out $720 million. And back in the 2010s, Gov. Jerry Brown, to his credit, rebuffed two different efforts (1, 2) to reimplement the window statutes, saying it was unfair to open up the window a second time.
• False accusations against Catholic priests are rampant. As we reported only weeks ago, the recent annual independent audit report revealed that only a mere 6% (!) of all historical allegations made in 2022 were even deemed "credible" by the very lenient standards of diocesan review boards, while the rest of the accusations were deemed either "unsubstantiated," "unable to be proven," or still being investigated. And of the 44 current minors who came forward in 2021 claiming that a current priest abused them, only 4 of those allegations were determined to be "substantiated." Yes, nearly 91% of the accusations were bogus. Think about that: some 9 in 10 of the few current allegations are totally bogus.

It is obviously impossible for any organization to individually litigate 500+ claims, and California legislators surely knew this when they passed the window statutes. After failing to bankrupt the Church the first time around in 2003, California launched a second trip to the trough that even liberal Gov. Jerry Brown thought was too much and unfair. Meanwhile, the accusers are guaranteed total anonymity, and thus it's a fraudster's paradise. And for sleazy contingency lawyers, it's an orgy of ill-gotten legal fees.

In the end, the real story here – one that you will never see in the media – is that "window legislation" has absolutely nothing to do with old sex abuse claims and everything to do with attacking the Catholic Church and lining the pockets of hateful lawyers like Marci Hamilton. All that comes from passing such statutes are countless phony claims against long-dead priests and robbing the Church of critical resources to advance her mission of helping the least fortunate in society.

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Want to learn about the rampancy of false accusations against priests?:
- "False Accusations Against Catholic Priests Are Now At Epic Proportions" (May 2019)
- The book: The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church by David F. Pierre, Jr. (Amazon.com)