a lot of good.
I testified in court this week and helped a priest sex abuse victim win a major settlement against the church. He was awarded half a million dollars.
His lawyer called me in May because I had filed an affidavit in support of a friend who had also made a claim twenty years ago. Through the process of discovery he had obtained a copy of it. And through the internet he eventually tracked me down.
Both my friend and I had, at separate times, been molested by the same priest. Me when I was about 12. He at 14. I have mentioned this at least once before here in a diary on the subject. My friend's claim was settled out of court at that time, and no further mention of the incident was made again until two months ago, when I received the phone call.
My motivations for going public, (that is, agreeing to testify in court) were simple. I did not seek fame or fortune. I did it because it was the right thing to do. I did it because I was the one person available who could and would give verifiable evidence to support the victim's claim that the priest in question had committed prior acts of abuse. (My friend could not bring himself to come forward, and so was not interested at this time). And because the church had been notified of his behavior, no further acts by this priest should ever have been allowed to happen- or at least, steps should haven been taken to prevent it. Nothing was done of course, as the Church simply did what it usually did at that time- moved such predators around, reassigning them to new posts in different parishes.
So this week, I found myself, for the very first time in my life, called to the witness stand.
After being sworn in, seated, and quickly downing a cup of cold water poured by the baliff (which to my surprise I found both sorely needed and magically restorative) I explained who I was, where I lived, family, career, etc... and then where I grew up, and finally, precisely what the situation was that led to me being alone with this priest and what he did to me.
I then relayed the later story of my friend and his incident. This immediately became quite difficult when the defense team began rising on "objection"s due to my treading into hearsay and bumping up against the rules of evidence. The judge stopped me twice, reprimanding the lawyer and threatening to end my testimony. I was getting angry and frustrated, both at the judge, and even more so at the defense lawyers, and I didn't mind expressing it. I put sarcastic emphasis on the necessary rephrasing such as "I was informed" while aiming daggered glares at the defense table. When I finally finished and was excused (after barely twenty minutes), I got up and headed straight for the door at the back, only allowing the briefest nods to the claimant's lawyers and then the claimant and his family. And although the lawyer had repeatedly prefaced each of his questions with "you've told the jury..." I in fact looked towards the jury box not once. My attention was entirely on the lawyer and the hated defense team.
Later, towards the end of that day, I phoned the lawyer and apologized for losing my patience and perhaps forgetting any crucial testimony. He assured me I did fine, and the show of emotion could only help support my credibility and engender sympathy. More surprisingly, he explained that despite the judge initially coming down hard on us, she actually relented somewhat and let me slip in a couple of "he said"s. To any lawyers, this allowance should be more understandable when you learn that the third part of my testimony involved my account of a later meeting in which my friend, his father, and I sat before the Bishop in the official diocesan residence and told the Bishop what had happened. So in essence, I had to tell the story of two boys telling their stories, in addition to the words of my friend's deceased father. (The words of the deceased are more admissible as evidence). This was crucial in establishing that the Bishop did in fact have knowledge of two separate incidents prior to the later, much worse molestation of the trial's claimant.
Sure enough, the lawyer called me Friday morning to inform me they had agreed to a settlement, and again, (for the umpteenth time) thanked me profusely for taking the time and effort to testify. Although I had to travel overnight in order to do so, I didn't mind- it was simply the right thing to do. I would want no less from one of my fellow citizens were I in such need. I of course congratulated him on the positive result for him and his client. And then, because my testimony was critical to the case, he confided that without it, their claim was extremely unlikely to win.
Finally, I wanted absolute anonymity as a witness. While the judge required that my name be read in court, I was assured that the press would respect my wishes and not publish it. And so in the papers I am simply "a man who now lives in New York".