Scottish Catholic Observer

The High Court in London has ruled that the Catholic Church can be held liable for its priests’ actions. The ruling may mean dioceses in England and Wales are financially liable for any wrongdoings by priests. The ruling has no bearing under Scots law.

Mr Justice MacDuff gave a decision in favour of a 47-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, who claims she was sexually assaulted as a child by the late Fr Wilfred Baldwin, a priest of the Portsmouth Diocese, at a children’s home in Hampshire run by an order of nuns. Giving his decision on a preliminary issue in her damages action the judge held that, in law, the Church ‘may be vicariously liable’ for Father Baldwin’s alleged wrongdoings. Although the point to be decided arose in a damages action over alleged sex abuse by a priest, it is understood that the decision will affect other types of claims made against the Church.

The trustees of the Portsmouth Roman Catholic Diocesan Trust were given leave to appeal.

Lord Faulks QC, for the defendants, said that the Catholic Church ‘takes sexual abuse extremely seriously and it is entirely concerned to eradicate it.’ The preliminary issue was on a point of law, he said, and emphasised that the Church was not seeking to abandon responsibility for sexual abuse.

During the hearing of the issue in July, the judge was told by Elizabeth-Anne Gumbel QC, representing the woman at the centre of the sex abuse claim, that the issue to be determined was whether the Church ‘can ever be vicariously liable in any situation for any tort at all.’

It was, she said, ‘a very wide issue indeed.’

Lawyers for the alleged victim said it was the first time a court has been asked to rule on whether the ‘relationship between a Catholic priest and his bishop is akin to an employment relationship.’

In October last year, the Appeal Court ruled that a Catholic institute which supplied priests to a Middlesbrough-approved school could not be held responsible for the alleged abuse carried out unchecked for over 30 years.

Some 150 former pupils of St William’s School in Market Weighton, Middlesbrough have launched an £8million claim— still to be heard—against those who ran the school in what has been described as the biggest ever abuse case in Britain.

The appeal judges unanimously backed the decision of Judge Hawkesworth QC in the High Court in November 2009 that the Institute had no legal responsibility for the alleged abuse.