Patrick Dailey, a former fifth-grade teacher, was convicted last October of sexually abusing eight boys over a three year period. He was sentenced up to 15 years in prison. Now, the family of one of the victims has filed a lawsuit against the Holt (Michigan) Public School district alleging that officials withheld information and did not take action against recurring inappropriate physical contact with students between 2015 and 2018.
Unfortunately, we have seen this pattern before; it dates back decades.
The culture is better than it was in the 1980s when my law firm handled its first Catholic clergy abuse case. I wrote a novel, Betrayal of Faith, which tells the story of two clergy child abuse victims, their experiences with the criminal and civil justice systems, and what the institutional cover-up conspiracy “feels like.”
However, it is still not enough. We can and must do more.