toledoblade.com --

COLUMBUS - It would be a list of people "credibly accused" of molesting a child.

It would be a list that any church, scout troop, school, or Little League team could access to check out potential volunteers or employees.

It would be a list of people who might never have been charged with a crime, let alone have been convicted of one.

For this general concept, there is no working model. But it is a concept that the Catholic Church has proposed as an alternative to a bill now before the Ohio House Judiciary Committee.

That bill would suspend for one year the statute of limitations on lawsuits alleging child sex abuse. If passed, the change could lead to hundreds of civil lawsuits alleging sexual abuse as long ago as 35 years.

Potentially it could cost the church millions. It might also have other effects.

"When an accusation is made, it tars a person for the rest of his life," Bishop Frederick Campbell of the Columbus Diocese recently told the House Judiciary Committee.

He urged the committee to dump the idea of the one-time, one-year suspension of the statute of limitations.

Instead Bishop Campbell offered the alternative of a civil registry. But that idea is still a work in progress. Some argue it runs the same risk.

"I would argue there would be the same constitutional infirmity in this registry as in opening a one-year window," said state Rep. John Willamowski (R., Lima), the committee's chairman.

"Is the Catholic Church then going to be in court arguing that the list is unconstitutional?"

The civil registry idea has been floated in other states. It would be a list that could flag people that criminal background checks would not. No state, however, has enacted such a list.

"I wish I had a better handle on what this would look like," said Tim Laukhaupt, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Ohio, the lobbying arm for Ohio's bishops.

"How it would actually function is being explored by our legal counsel," he said.

"At some point, we will have something in writing to present to the chairman as to how it would work."

The registry would be entirely separate from the state's current registration and neighborhood notification requirements for certain sex offenders under Ohio's Megan's Law. That procedure is triggered only after a criminal conviction and a judicial hearing.

In theory, names would find their way onto the civil registry through admissions or "credible accusations," such as through a lawsuit whose allegations are validated through a verdict; a settlement, or a follow-up investigation.

But it remains unclear whether the church plans to mine its record archives. It is these records that past victims say they most hope to force into public view, either through the litigation discovery process or a court settlement.

"Their proposal that there be a civil registry is nothing more than one sentence," said Tony Comes, the Toledo firefighter who settled his case with the Diocese of Toledo after claiming he'd been abused as a teenager by then-priest Dennis Gray.

His story became the focus of the Academy Award-nominated documentary Twist of Faith.

"They have no working model," he said. "They have no idea of what it would take to adjudicate these cases. … For them to float this balloon of a civil registry list, in my opinion, is nothing more than a diversionary tactic."

As a rudimentary example of what a registry might look like, the Catholic Conference points to an update on the status of sexual abuse cases that the Diocese of Toledo posts on its Web site at www.toledodiocese.org.

That report discusses the status of allegations against 39 clerics, providing a list of names that are in the public domain. The report last was updated in February.

Seven allegations involve priests who since have died. Their names are not included.

"The deceased cannot defend themselves against accusations," said Sally Oberski, spokesman for the diocese.

"If someone comes up and says they were abused by a deceased priest, there's no way to do an investigation."

Although the Judiciary Committee's mission is legislation that would affect all abusers, the bulk of the testimony has focused on priests.

Currently, a victim of child sexual abuse has until age 20 to sue. The bill would extend that to 38.

The bill would add priests, rabbis, ministers, and nonvolunteer church officials to the list of professionals required to report a reasonable suspicion of abuse to authorities.

The Catholic Church's opposition has focused on the one-year window for reviving lawsuits for abuse occurring as long ago as 1970.

The current statute of limitations has long since expired for these cases.

When such a window was opened in 2003 in California, where an estimated 30 percent of 34 million people are Catholic, 800 to 1,000 suits were filed.

Ohio - with a population of 11 million people, of which 18 percent are Catholic - could expect hundreds.

Jeff Gamso, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, said the ACLU has yet to examine either the "look-back" or registry proposals. But he said he believes a registry would face a legal challenge, if only from those trying to keep from appearing on it.

"This would be a list of people who've been accused of something," he said.

"We don't know what level of scrutiny would go into the determination of whether someone has done something, or whether there would be an appeals process."

Marci Hamilton, professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York and author of the recently published God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law, has argued that the one-year look-back window would survive a constitutional challenge.

But she said the church's civil registry proposal would not.

"If there are accusations through a civil lawsuit, the defendant is given a trial to prove they're innocent," she said. "The verdict would get public coverage of a jury and judge saying they're innocent. That doesn't happen in the process they're describing."

During a recent hearing, Rep. Louis Blessing (R., Cincinnati) suggested a compromise that would offer the church limited liability.

He suggested the creation of a pot of money fueled by the church from which past victims could seek settlements. The church would not have to defend itself against individual lawsuits.

He said he believes the Ohio Supreme Court would strike down any attempt to retroactively lift the statute of limitations.

"I think it's a dead-bang loser," he said.

Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.

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