Sep. 8—Last fall, more than a dozen people who say they were sexually abused as children by members of Maine’s Catholic Church huddled in a hallway outside a Bangor courtroom.
Their lawyers had just appeared before Maine’s highest court to argue whether their lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland were constitutional. They began suing after Maine removed all time barriers for civil claims of sexual abuse.
The group expected they would likely be waiting anywhere from a few weeks to six months for a decision.
More than 10 months later, they’re still waiting.
“Today marks 301 days since we were before Maine’s Law Court to defend the constitutionality of the law that provides survivors of childhood sexual abuse with access to justice — on their terms when they are ready, and regardless of how much time has passed,” their attorney Michael Bigos said in a written statement Thursday.
Bigos said he hears regularly from his clients who are anxious about the ruling. He encourages them to remain patient and get help from mental health support organizations for victims of sexual abuse.
“Some are in their 80’s, several have serious health issues that compound their sense of urgency for progress, and one has died,” he wrote. He declined to name or elaborate on the client who died. “We nevertheless advise patience in the constitutional process.”
The diocese’s lawyer, Gerald Petruccelli, declined to discuss the pending ruling. Bishop James Ruggieri, who replaced Bishop Robert Deeley in May when he retired, also declined to speak through a spokesperson for the diocese.
In previous hearings and court records, Petruccelli has argued the church has a lot at stake, too — millions of dollars in potential damages that they weren’t liable for until the law changed in 2021.
That’s true for a lot of organizations who have worked with children, Petruccelli has argued in legal filings, and an unfavorable ruling for the diocese would put them at risk, too.
LONGER WAITS ARE MORE COMMON
The average wait time for high court opinions has nearly doubled since 2019, according to a Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram analysis of published opinions on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s website.
In 2019, the court published 179 opinions with an average wait time of roughly 2 1/2 months — that doesn’t include parental rights cases and decisions the court made without issuing a formal opinion.
So far this year, the court has published 70 opinions, with an average wait time of five months, and has ruled on 88 other matters.
Barbara Cardone, a spokesperson for the judicial branch, said the chief justice would not discuss the amount of time they spend on opinions and why these opinions might be taking longer to process. Cardone was unable to provide numbers by Friday on how many cases the state Supreme Court considers each year.
The high court considers criminal appeals when defendants challenge their convictions, sentencing and post-conviction matters. They also review family cases, including lower-court decisions to terminate parents’ rights and those dealing with divorce and custody arrangements.
But even five years ago, there were outliers. One contentious decision involving intertidal zoning and rockweed harvesting, published in March 2019, wasn’t released until more than a year after the court heard arguments at the end of 2017.
This year, the court published a major ruling on foreclosures that it first heard arguments on a year and a half earlier. It recently published a decision on the Big Moose Mountain Ski area, more than a year and three months after arguments.
LOUISIANA CASE
While the victims and diocese have been waiting for a ruling, attorneys for both sides have continued to file documents to support their arguments.
In March, Petruccelli notified the Maine court about a decision in Louisiana that declared a similar law unconstitutional.
Louisiana lawmakers agreed in 2021 to create a “look back” window for victims of childhood sexual abuse. From June 2021 to June 2024, victims of sexual abuse could file claims for abuse, regardless of when it occurred.
But that state’s Supreme Court found that the law opened defendants up to unexpected claims, violating their due process rights, and was unconstitutional.
“The opinions of the justices of the Supreme Court of Louisiana have some bearing on much of what was argued in the briefs and orally in the pending cases,” Petruccelli wrote in a brief he filed March 25.
But months later, at the Louisiana attorney general’s urging, the court reconsidered and changed its mind.
“Given Louisiana’s legitimate interest in protecting its citizens who were sexually abused as minors and in providing them with the ability to seek redress in the courts, and the narrowly tailored nature of the relief provided — the legislation revives, for a short period of time, for a narrow category of tort victims, actions otherwise prescribed — it is clear that defendants have failed to satisfy the ‘heavy burden’ of proving the unconstitutionality of the revival provision,” the Louisiana high court wrote in its second opinion.
The justices disagreed that the look-back window would “open the floodgates of unrestrained legislative action,” pointing out that each lawsuit still has to go through the same pre-trial legal processes and be decided by a judge or jury.
Bigos, who is representing dozens of people suing the diocese and even more who have yet to file a claim, has said that if Maine declared the law unconstitutional, the state would be an island among others in New England that have removed time barriers for claims of childhood sexual abuse.
Vermont and New Hampshire have no time barriers for childhood sex abuse claims, according to a 2023 report by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In Massachusetts, the window is wide — anyone who says they’ve been abused has 35 years after the act, or within seven years of its discovery, to bring a claim. The time period is suspended until that person turns 18.
UNCERTAINTY
Advocates for victims of childhood sex abuse say these laws are best practice because most victims don’t fully come to terms with what happened to them until later in life.
“We know that changes like this are complicated and the Maine Supreme Court must take time and care to make sure that survivors seeking this route are fully protected under the law,” Melissa Martin, public policy director for Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault, wrote in an email. “We also understand how long survivors have been waiting for real avenues to pursue justice and accountability from the people and institutions that harmed them and share in their frustration at having to continue to wait and wonder. Survivors have always deserved better choices, and this one is worth continuing to fight for.”
The uncertainty of what happens next is taking a toll on several plaintiffs, especially those who struggled with whether to file anything in the first place, advocates say.
It’s not only the 30 plaintiffs suing the diocese who are affected — countless cases against the Bangor YMCA, Camp Kieve, the Special Olympics and a number of individual defendants have also been paused pending the high court’s decision.
Hundreds haven’t even filed anything yet, waiting to see what their odds are, say Bigos and attorney Timothy Kenlan, who works for the same firm. In April, one man whose case was stalled decided to settle and drop his claims against the diocese.
“I think there are just a lot of people out there who are in limbo waiting for their ability to seek justice through these civil actions against the diocese and other perpetrators of abuse,” Kenlan said at the time.
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