Lawyer for Knoxville Catholic diocese held conflicting roles in sex abuse case

knox news

• The lawyer for the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville sits on a sexual abuse review board while also defending the church against an abuse lawsuit.
• “It is a worst practice, one that mocks the claim by U.S. bishops that they’ve turned a new leaf when it. comes to abuse,” says one watchdog.
• Sexual abuse review boards were created by the Catholic church as a response to the explosive sexual abuse findings in the early 2000s.

The diocese said it “is confident that no conflicts exist under the facts of the case.”
When Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville earlier this year, diocesan leaders had known for nearly two years about her account of being sexually assaulted by a priest. The knowledge went all the way to Bishop Richard Stika, the leader of the diocese.

Helene M. Weiss is an attorney at New York City’s James Marsh Law firm, which has expertise in abuse lawsuits against the Catholic church. There’s likely nothing illegal about Ward’s placement on the board and his role as lawyer for the diocese, she said, but it could be a conflict of interest.

“Although the board may want to appear as a neutral investigator, their interests in reviewing these sexual abuse cases seldom overlap with the best interests of the abuse survivor,” she wrote to Knox News in an email.

“This is the reality when you have an institution who perpetrated and enabled abuse for centuries acting as the primary ‘investigator’ into these cases. Obviously, there is a clear need for independent investigations by law enforcement agencies in every case like this.”