Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Public Law 33-187

The sad thing in our society is that scammers and opportunists do exist. Public law 33-187 is being challenged by the Archdiocese of Agana.  This law may be unconstitutional, but it also opens the door for scammers to target the Catholic Church.  According to The Media Report:  
In 2010, Vincent Carroll at the Denver Post fearlessly noted, "[F]raudulent or highly dubious accusations are more common than is acknowledged in coverage of the church scandals — although they should not be surprising, given the monumental settlements various dioceses have paid out over the years."
In 2005, Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal, writing about abuse lawsuits against the Church, asserted, "People have to come to understand that there is a large scam going on with personal injury attorneys, and what began as a serious effort [to help genuine victims] has now expanded to become a huge money-making proposition."
In addition, in 2001 (!), an East Coast attorney wrote, "I have some contacts in the prison system, having been an attorney for some time, and it has been made known to me that [accusing a Catholic priest of abuse] is a current and popular scam."
Who knows how many more such scams are being perpetrated today while the mainstream media sleeps? 
Public law 33-187, which was passed by the Governor and Guam Legislature, is an open door for scammers to walk in and target the Catholic Church.  In the United States, the U.S. bishops' have also expressed their opposition to these kind of bills and laws, which is a good sign that they have finally caught on to the relationship between accusations against priests and the enticement of guaranteed financial settlements.


This law targets mainly the Catholic Church.  In prison, the ones who face claims of sexual abuse that are decades old are only Catholic priests.  Among the thousands of men who have passed through prison for sexual abuse charges, there is no other case of a man facing charges that were many years or decades old, going back to 20 to 50 years ago. This happens solely to Catholic priests, and it is because of the enticement of money.  The law made it easy for scammers to scam the Catholic Church out of millions of dollars.  According to one news report:
The Catholic Church told police it was duped into paying $188,000 to a woman who claimed she was injured when raped by a priest. 
The police only became aware of the woman's claims that she was raped by a Palmerston North Catholic priest - who abused her with a knife and a broken bottle - when the church learned it had been duped out of the payments. 
The woman, who has name suppression, appeared at the Morrinsville District Court on Wednesday, June 8, to be sentenced on one charge of obtaining by deception $188,190.17 from the Catholic Church, which paid for various medical operations and psychological tests in relation to the abuse claim. 
The woman supplied fake medical reports to the church to support the claim. 
The fraud was discovered only when the church queried one of the reports with a health provider.  

26 comments:

  1. What proof do you have that these victims who have filed their cases in court are scammers? So far the only evidence is pointing towards the archdiocese and the Boy Scouts as having to hide and shuffle pedophiles within this diocese. Is that right to hide them? Are you Diana saying that it's ok for institutions to hide the predators?

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    1. Dear Anonymous at 12:16 pm,

      What proof do you have that they are not......especially the ones whose alleged perpetrators and witnesses are long dead? I pointed out the flaw in the law. It is unfortunate that the senators who passed this law did not put in any measures to prevent someone from taking advantage of the system.

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  2. The prood that they are not scammers Diana, is that they put their name, honor on the line unlike you who continues to hide behind Diana...funny thing is you can't even be truthful and honest.

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    1. Dear Anonymous at 12:28 am,

      The woman who scammed the Church of $188,000 also gave her name. It was the newspaper that suppressed it. Also, lately there has been a number of lawsuits who only gave their initials.

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    2. So where is your proof Diana that at least one of these victims is a scammer? You seem to find them guilty of a scam rather then feel any compassion to what they've endured.

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    3. Dear Anonymous at 6:44 am,

      Please read the OP. This is about a law that has a loophole in which scammers can come in to dupe the Archdiocese of millions of dollars. An investigation is the only thing that can determine who is a scammer and who is not. But so far, we have lawsuits and no investigations. If the Guam Legislature had bothered to put in "investigations" as part of the law, the loophole might be closed to scammers. The only investigation that was conducted is the canonical trial of Archbishop Apuron.

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    4. Diana, you had a chance to speak freely during the public hearings. Where were you? You have a lot to say about the law yet what have you done to say anything against it if you feel so strongly against it?

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    5. Dear Anonymous at 8:29 am,

      You are correct that I was not at the public hearing. Nevertheless, I spoke out in opposition by signing the petition, which is another form of expression. One person spoke up in the public hearing, but the senators were too caught up in their emotions rather than with reason and logic.

      Although many more stood against the Bill through the petition, even the governor signed it into law despite that he admitted that the Bill was questionable. Again, reason and logic went out the window.

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    6. There was only ONE who spoke up in opposition against many others who actually gave testimony on why the law should be passed. Just a signature with no reason is not even close to actual testimony. None of you provided any reasons yet you CRY FOUL about it AFTER the law was passed.

      Even now, you provide no evidence or reason WHY the institutions which hide these pedophiles shouldn't be punished. Hiding and shuffling these pedophiles goes against what God teaches us and yet you are for the very institutions which harbor them because you refuse to believe that what they've done is just WRONG....

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    7. Dear Anonymous at 9:47 am,

      For your information, the petition came with a reason. One does not sign a petition without reading what they are signing for.

      I gave my reason in another post, but you either missed that post or you did not like my reason. Only people commit crimes. Institutions are not people. It was people who hid the priests by transferring them from one place to another.

      If you believe that the institution (Catholic Church) committed the crime, you can always leave that institution. Yet, why you stay is baffling.

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    8. The same could be said to you about leaving the institution. As for the reason, where you placed your reason wasn't in the public forum but AFTER the law was passed. While it's true that people commit the crimes, it's the institution which they hide behind. Look at brother tony who hid Luis camacho or the fact that the archdiocese is still paying broulard. Brother tony is just one example of how the institution can easily be used for the crimes which were committed. There was never any checks and balances and bishops on up had immense power within because the institution was easily flawed.

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    9. Dear Anonymous at 10:37 am,

      Again an institution is not a person. An institution can have corrupted people, and to clean the institution is to take out the corrupted people rather than to sue the institution.

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    10. The original intent of the "Silent no more" was to sue the person. I think most people would have no problem with that. But somewhere in the process, someone changed the Bill to include the institution, perhaps because greed came into the picture. You can't get millions of dollars from an institution rather than a person.

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    11. I meant you CAN get millions of dollars from an institution rather than a person.

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    12. "Again an institution is not a person"

      Well a "corporate sole" is a person. That's the whole point. And, from th epoint of view of the law, any corporation is essentially a person.

      In fact, the NCW is considered a "juridic person", is it not?

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    13. Dear Anonymous at 2:47 pm,

      The law never defined the "corporation" as a person. It simply stated that the corporation has an identity of its own different from it's shareholders and owners, but it was never identified as a "person". Also, "juridic person" is a term found in the church, but not in secular law.

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    14. Yes you are right. A juridic person is an entity which is treated as ifit were a person under canon law. From Wiki:

      "A juridic person... is an artificial person, distinct from all natural persons or material goods, constituted by competent ecclesiastical authority for an apostolic purpose, with a capacity for continuous existence and with canonical rights and duties like those of a natural person... conferred upon it by law or by the authority which constitutes it and to which it is also accountable under canon law."

      Also from Wiki (Corporate Persons): "Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation, separately from its associated human beings (like owners, managers, or employees), has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons (physical humans)"

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    15. Dear Anonymous at 2:13 am,

      Exactly. They are not even human beings. And human beings are the only ones who sins.

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  3. Are you ok with the Boy Scouts being sued for the acts of Fr. Louis Brouillard Diana?

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  4. Is it ok to sue the Boy Scouts?

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  5. Institution holds Billions of dollars in Banks of Guam.Give one Billion to Victims show sincerity. One Billion is a small percent of Guam's Archdiocese.

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  6. All the Anonymous is that you Tim Rohr Millions??? like in easily 40 Million dollars

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    1. Are YOU Tim Rohr Mr/Mrs/Ms/Dr Anonymous 2:32? LOL

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    2. No Tim I'm not you at 9:36 am

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    3. I'm 9:36 AM and guess what? I'm not Tim either 1;52 PM

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