Sexual abuse is NOT charitable. Tort law pays victims damages for the harms defendants inflicted on them. Charitable immunity restricts the tort damages that nonprofit institutions like churches have to pay, allegedly because the charities are performing good works. Churches should not be immune from tort liability for their sexual abuse just because they also supposedly do good things.
Churches keep claiming this charitable limitation on their liability to abuse victims. Courts keep debating if they should let the churches go free or hold them liable for their harms to survivors.
The courts need to be clearer that church defendants should not be free from any tort liability for sexual abuse.
Intentional Torts: South Carolina
The South Carolina Supreme Court just ruled unanimously, in Doe v. Bishop of Charleston, that charitable immunity does not free churches from their liability for intentional torts. The state’s lower, circuit, and appeals courts, dismissed John Doe’s lawsuit against the Bishop of Charleston and the Charleston Diocese, concluding the defendants were charitably immune from the lawsuit.
Plaintiff John Doe alleged “he was sexually assaulted by two of his teachers in 1970 while attending seventh grade at a school operated by the Diocese. The petitioner’s claims are not against the teachers or based on respondeat superior. Rather, he alleges the Diocese has direct, independent tort liability for certain conduct that caused his harm.” Respondeat superior holds employers liable for the tortious actions of their employees. Doe wanted to hold the church liable for its own misconduct. The torts Doe claimed were the “intentional torts of intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of fiduciary duty, fraudulent concealment, and civil conspiracy.”
Was Charleston immune? South Carolina adopted charitable immunity in 1914. Even then, the current supreme court notes, it was “controversial.” The South Carolina Supreme Court abolished it prospectively in 1981. They note today such immunity is a “disfavored doctrine” that is “beating a steady retreat from many jurisdictions.” Nonetheless, the circuit court and court of appeals dismissed John Doe’s lawsuit, concluding the church had charitable immunity from ALL intentional torts in 1970.
The South Carolina Supreme Court disagreed. Unanimously.
Relying on Jeffcoat v. Caine, the court’s 1973 decision, Justice D. Garrison Hill wrote that “Justice Lewis, writing for the unanimous Court in Jeffcoat, was careful to explain the charitable immunity doctrine had never extended to intentional torts.” That was what the law had always said. Lewis also stated, “the application of the immunity doctrine in a case of intentional tort is not required by precedent, nor, we conclude, by reason or justice.” Then Hill concluded in Lewis’s spirit: “Nothing in our decisions in the half century since Jeffcoat shakes that judgment.”
Reason and justice prevailed. The case is remanded, so Doe’s claims will be heard in court instead of dismissed.
All sex abuse cases should be handled that way. Let the courts sort out whether there was tortious misconduct or not, instead of using charitable immunity to end the lawsuit. I like that the Vermont courts refused to apply charitable immunity to the sex abuse cases.
Negligence: Massachusetts
In contrast, in Massachusetts, home to so much Catholic abuse, plaintiffs were concerned from the start that charitable immunity would limit their sex abuse damages to $20,000. The plaintiffs won many, but not all, claims that charitable immunity did not apply. Churches first argued that they were immune from any lawsuits from conduct before 1971, when absolute charitable immunity existed. Some courts ruled that post-1971, church defendants were deprived of that immunity. Charitable immunity still restricts lawsuits from being filed, because $20,000 total damages is not enough to allow lawyers to agree to take the cases and earn any legal fees.
The Massachusetts courts are still considering where and how charitable immunity applies. In 2022, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reviewed a Doe case against the Roman Catholic bishop of Springfield, asking whether charitable immunity freed the bishop from liability for abuse committed in the 1960s. In the court’s words,
Reaching the merits, we determine that common-law charitable immunity insulates the Roman Catholic Bishop of Springfield only from the count alleging negligent hiring and supervision. It does not protect the Roman Catholic Bishop of Springfield from the counts alleging sexual assault against the plaintiff, as these allegations do not involve conduct related to a charitable mission.
The court concluded that abuse is clearly not related to charity, which is correct.
Nonetheless, it also stated that a “negligent supervision claim is exactly the sort of allegation against which common-law charitable immunity was meant to protect.”
Really? Negligent hiring and negligent supervision are precisely the
kinds of activities that protect abusers and abusers’ defenders. Religious defendants have long ignored the harm their employees do, just pretending it does not exist even when all the evidence shows they know about the abuse and cover it up. Charitable immunity for hiring and supervision leaves the churches immune to ignore the priests, brothers, sisters, and laity they hire and to pretend they know nothing about and are not responsible for sexual abuse.
Reason and justice demand a different conclusion.
South Carolina took a good step forward on freeing intentional torts from charitable immunity. Yet charitable immunity still protects the churches in too many circumstances. Sexual abuse, whether intentional or negligent, is never charitable. Pretending it is harms abuse survivors. It should be controversial in all circumstances today.
