While the context is admittedly horrific--victims of sexual abuse and the Catholic Church--data from the Netherlands, which in 2011 implemented a victim-friendly procedure for victims of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church, provide truly unique insights into "whether and how nonmonetary needs can be addressed within the context of tort law and compensation funds, as the decisions include information on why victims initiated the procedure and what types of relief (e.g., an apology, recognition of their suffering, an acknowledgment) they obtained." Facilitating research is that decisions in all such cases are published.
In a recent JELS article, Victim-Oriented Tort Law in Action: An Empirical Examination of Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Cases (or here), Gijs van Dijck (Maastricht--Law) analyzes 1,237 decisions and observes a "mismatch between what victims sought and what they were offered." The paper's abstract follows.
"Catholic Church sexual abuse cases have received worldwide attention, with lawsuits and nationwide investigations reported in various countries. This study examines a procedure—a hybrid between tort litigation and a victim compensation fund—that not only allowed sexual abuse victims to seek monetary compensation on an individual basis, but also nonmonetary relief, including an apology, recognition, and measures against those responsible for the abuse. The publication of all decisions offers a unique opportunity to analyze what victims pursued by filing a claim, whether what they were offered matched their objectives, and what impacted the probability of victims obtaining certain types of nonmonetary relief. After analyzing 1,237 decisions, this study reveals a mismatch between what victims sought and what they were offered. Surprisingly, the presence or absence of a few panelists (out of 27) turns out to be the best predictor of whether adjudicators ordered nonmonetary relief. Consequently, whether victims obtained nonmonetary relief did not only depend on a proper legal infrastructure, but mostly on the mentality and attitudes of those participating in the system."
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