Dispute Settlement Counsel

The crisis of child abuse by priests of the Roman Catholic Church and the cover-ups by their bishops was the focus of a recent Time magazine cover story (June 7, 2010).  The story caught my interest for several reasons:  I am a committed Christian, an active member of the oldest national Christian church, the Armenian Orthodox Church, and a former seminarian who gave serious though to becoming a clergyman.  And my first job out of law school was prosecuting child abuse cases in Westchester (NY) County.

But also, I was interested in the story because I am a lawyer and mediator, dedicated to the non-adversarial resolution of dispute resolution.  I read the article with sadness, feeling compassion for the victims, but also for the Catholic Church dealing with a difficult issue and for the stakeholders – the faithful of the Catholic Church and all those other priests who have done no wrong, but have to live with the stigma of the wrongdoing that touches their ministries as well.

The article mentioned the two approaches that people are presently using to address this crisis:  either going through a long litigation path that begins with the state Attorney General’s office and is thereafter driven by private attorneys or an internal process within the hierarchy of the Church.  The first is tremendously draining and damaging to those victims who can even afford the legal fees; the second has failed to gain the trust and confidence of the people because it has often done little more than transfer or re-assign the suspected priests and keep the matter as quiet as possible. The authors identified the many interests and needs of all those involved: the Pope, the church’s hierarchy, the Catholic Church itself, the priests – both those guilty of the wrongs and those who pastoral work has been without incident — the victims, the families of the victims, the Catholic parishes and faithful.  I couldn’t help but recognize how much more effective the process of resolution and reconciliation would be if those involved utilized processes like Collaborative Law (“CL”), Integrated Dispute Resolution (“IDR”), mediation or other interest-based approaches.  These processes, unlike litigation which has limited remedies, and internal approaches which have inherent conflicts of interests, are designed to effectively handle exactly these situations, and have the tools and the agility to do so.

When many interests of many stakeholders must be heard, understood and addressed, when the solutions must be tailored to the circumstances of those involved and when there will be ongoing relationships, CL or IDR are perfect fits.  This is especially true because CL and IDR have the capacity to bring neutral and trained mental health professionals into the dispute resolution process early and work with the victims, the perpetrators, the overseers and the community around them all to provide vital counseling.

Listen to the interests in this needs-rich crisis:  Meeting with and listening to the accounts and the anguished stories of the abused victims; counseling and treating the victims, their families and the abusive clergymen, creating programs to prevent further abuses, addressing  the issue of celibate parish priests itself; maintaining the respectability of the Catholic Church; restoring the confidence and trust of its faithful members; providing support and counsel to both those priests in positions of oversight and governance and those priests who are colleagues and friends of the perpetrators, providing services to a parish that has been directly impacted by the pastoral abuse of a perpetrating clergyman; providing a vehicle for forgiveness and reconciliation, just to mention some of the issues.

The Catholic Church’s internal means of addressing the crisis has not been able to address these needs; the courts and litigation have no ability to do so.  But there are processes that can provide what is needed.  The Catholic Church, its hierarchs, priests, and parishioners need to take advantage of and utilize processes and trained Collaborative lawyers and mediators that are ready and waiting to respond to this crisis.

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