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Ruling From the Bench: Release the Documents

Deadline set to release documents from church abuse documents

By Kristie Borges

| Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009 | Updated 6:15 PM EDT

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Ruling From the Bench: Release the Documents

A Waterbury Superior Court Judge orders the release of 12,000 pages of documents from 23 lawsuits.

The battle over documents related to sexual abuse cases involving children and the Bridgeport Diocese takes another turn

On Tuesday, a Waterbury Superior Court judge ruled thousands of documents must be released by December 1. The Diocese was also wanted to destroy documents and CD-ROMs it had provided to the court.

The files of the Bridgeport Diocese consist of more than 12,000 pages from 23 lawsuits against six priests settled by the Diocese in 2001. Some expect the release of the documents to shed light on how recently retired New York Cardinal Edward Egan handled the allegations when he was a Bridgeport bishop.

The New York Times says the papers detail decisions the Diocese made in assigning priests who had molested children in the past to positions where they abused children again.

The documents in question were sealed in 2001 after the Bridgeport Diocese reached settlements with plaintiffs, most of the former altar boys and youth group members who said they were molested by priests in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

Earlier this month, the Diocese lost its appeal to the nation’s highest court to have a state court’s decision overruled. The State court had originally ordered the documents released.