Since the 1950s, the Catholic Church has been aware that it has a problem with priests who sexually abuse children. After one of the victims sued a California archdiocese in 2017, a trial court found that since the priest’s Los Angeles Archdiocese had no direct knowledge of his sexual misconduct, the church had no duty to protect the young boy. The appellate court reversed, finding that a duty to protect children certainly does exist.

Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, Associate Justice John L. Segal of District Seven of the California Court of Appeal’s Second Appellate District, reversed the judgment of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Olivia Rosales on October 20. Rosales had granted the Archdiocese’s motion for summary judgment, finding the plaintiff “failed to raise a triable issue of material fact,” since the Archdioceses had no knowledge of or “even reason to know” about the priest’s behavior. Plaintiff John H.G. Doe appealed.

Segal’s opinion began with a description of plaintiff John H.G. Doe’s sexual abuse by Father John Higson, an associate pastor at Our Lady of the Rosary in Sun Valley, California, which is one of 288 parishes in the Los Angeles Archdiocese. According to trial testimony, then 10-year-old Doe was accosted by Higson when he went to the bathroom during catechism class. The priest, he said, grabbed his genitals and forced him to perform oral sex. Doe claimed that Higson told him that “every boy does this in order to do their First Communion.” Although Doe was very upset, he did not tell anyone about the initial or subsequent encounter.

After recounting the facts of the case, Segal included a lengthy history of how both the local Archdiocese and the national Catholic Church responded to escalating knowledge of its horrific problem. He traced the Church’s attempts to alleviate the widespread abuse from 1967 when it first came to national attention. He related how Doe’s Archdiocese had received 25 reports by 1984, and how the National Council of Catholic Bishops began to address the problem they now described as “more than a matter of tragic, but isolated incidents.” Many reports, educational retreats, screening protocols, new policies, and corrective procedures followed in efforts to prevent future sexual abuse by clergy.

Doe’s complaint argued that the Archdiocese knew about the “epidemic” of sexual abuse by priests; that the potential for sexual abuse was “foreseeable”; and that it had a duty to protect those “entrusted to its care.” He said the church was negligent in its hiring, supervision and retention of Higson and that they should have educated, trained and warned both children and parents about the possibility of sexual abuse by its employees. The Archdiocese responded with a motion for summary judgment, arguing it had no duty of care since there was “indisputable evidence” that it had no knowledge of Higson’s actions. The appeal addressed only the church’s failure to educate, train and warn its parishioners about sexual abuse by priests.

Turning to applicable law, Segal then recounted the standard for summary judgment – the absence of triable issues of material fact and the plaintiff’s burden to provide the evidence needed to establish at least one element of his complaint. Segal’s opinion then discussed the key issue, whether the church had a “legal duty of care to take action to protect a plaintiff from injuries caused by a third party.”

Citing two cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Segal discussed and applied the two-step test that should be used to define the duty. First, the court has to find a “special relationship” between the parties and, if one is found, it must then “determine whether relevant policy considerations” can limit that duty.

Segal wrote that there was a special relationship between Doe and his Archdiocese because the young boy’s enrollment in a parish class gives him a “right to expect protection.” He also explained that courts have frequently found that special relationships usually exist between “children and their adult caregivers.” Regarding the second part of the test, he concluded the church does have the “ability to control” the conduct of its priests and that the church should “use this position accordingly” to protect its “vulnerable and dependent” charges.

The opinion then turned to the determination of whether there were policy considerations that would excuse or limit the church's legal duty of care. Segal explained the two factors that could create exceptions to the duty: first, whether there is the foreseeability of harm; second, whether there are public policy concerns such as “moral blame, preventing future harm, burden or insurance availability.”

Segal concluded that the trial court had used an incorrect standard of foreseeability by focusing only on whether Doe created a triable issue of fact, and not also considering other relevant issues before granting summary judgment. He wrote that the decision should have been made based on whether the defendants took adequate measures to prevent abuse along with the kind of traumatic harm that Doe experienced. He cited several examples of how institutions such as colleges have created “threat assessment protocols” and “multidisciplinary teams” to prevent campus violence.

Recent Supreme Court decisions have expanded the legal duty of care beyond that found by the trial judge in this case. Newer rulings do not accept only “case-specific” questions about foreseeability, certainty, and whether there is a connection between the defendant’s conduct and the injury suffered. The Archdiocese’s decades-long knowledge of sexual abuse by its priests made Doe’s abuse reasonably foreseeable and should have prompted universal preventive measures, even if it did not specifically know about Higson’s activities. Regarding certainty, Justice Segal concluded that the harm caused to children who have been sexually abused is well known. Also, the church’s failure to implement effective protective policies and procedures “increased the likelihood priests would abuse children attending after-school classes.”

Next, Segal discussed the final current Supreme Court requirement regarding the duty of care--whether public policy issues are so “burdensome to society” that they outweigh foreseeability concerns. To make this determination, the Supreme Court found a duty to protect “particularly powerless or unsophisticated” plaintiffs, who have little control over risks. Clearly, children enrolled in religious schools establish this duty, and here, the church took only “minimal action” to prevent prevalent sexual abuse by priests. The Archdiocese should have acted to prevent “future harm” and doing so would not create an “onerous burden,” given the stakes and the large number of precautionary actions already taken by the Catholic Church. In addition, the Archdiocese had purchased insurance to “cover” sexual improprieties by priests.

For all these reasons, the summary judgment was reversed, costs awarded to Doe, and the case proceeds. This outcome is one more example of the courts taking the proactive and morally responsible action that the Church should have instituted on its own.