A bankruptcy judge won’t shorten the timeline for victims of clergy sex abuse to bring claims against the Roman Catholic diocese in Long Island, N.Y., saying survivors should get as much time as state law allows, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The ruling by Judge Shelley Chapman of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York aligns a crucial deadline for claims against the Diocese of Rockville Centre with the Aug. 14 cutoff date established under New York law. The diocese, which covers nearly all of suburban Long Island, had argued for a May deadline for bankruptcy claims, saying it needed to know how many sexual abuse claims it faced in order to move ahead swiftly with a settlement plan. Judge Chapman sided with an official committee representing sexual abuse survivors, adding that pressures of the pandemic argued for more time to file claims. Hundreds of lawsuits already had been filed when the diocese, the nation’s eighth-largest by the number of baptized Catholics, sought bankruptcy protection in October 2020. In court papers, committee lawyers said “many elderly and vulnerable adults” in the New York area will be weighing whether to file a bankruptcy claim and argued they should get as much time as lawmakers had given them to sue.
