A couple weeks ago, I posted on a bill working its way through the New York legislature that would lift the statute of limitations on filing sex abuse claims.

The bill could go for a vote before the Empire State Assembly as early as Monday.

While no one is willing to predict what, exactly, the impact might be, Newsday on Sunday took a look at how similar laws have affected other parts of the country:

In Los Angeles, the Roman Catholic archdiocese cut its central staff in half and sold its 12-floor headquarters. In Tucson, the diocese sold 85 pieces of property in the Arizona desert. In Davenport, Iowa, church officials posted a “for sale” sign on the bishop’s residence – then moved him into a modest bungalow.

Catholic dioceses across the United States have been hit with hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits stemming from child sex abuse cases in the past decade. Now, as lawmakers in Albany consider legislation that would create a one-year open window for victims to sue regardless of how long ago the alleged abuse occurred, church officials warn it could bankrupt the Catholic Church in New York.

Gov. David A. Paterson indicated late last week he was not in favor of the measure. Should the bill pass, however, it would become the third child sex abuse “open window” law in the country, after California and Delaware, whose two-year window closes in July. Legal experts said that in New York they anticipate hundreds of abuse victims, whose claims could involve not just the Catholic Church but also other religious institutions, public agencies and even long-ago cases of incest.

Sean Dolan, a spokesman for the 1.5-million member Diocese of Rockville Centre, said recently that the bill, sponsored by Assemb. Margaret M. Markey (D-Maspeth), could be “catastrophic” for the church.

“Financially it could bankrupt the Diocese of Rockville Centre,” he said. “It could decimate Catholic education. It could decimate Catholic health care. It could decimate our parishes.”

Advocates and trial lawyers who have represented sex abuse victims say churches have not gone out of business because of the claims, and that the potential consequences are being exaggerated. “No diocese has gone belly-up or even close,” said Marci Hamilton, a professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a leading church/state expert.

Nonetheless, “open window” type legislation or even the simple accumulation of sex abuse lawsuits in places without such laws has had a powerful impact. Like Los Angeles, some locations have been forced to sell their headquarters and cut back on central office staff. But most also say no schools or parishes closed, and the cutbacks shielded most outreach services such as health care or programs for the elderly or homeless.

Dolan said it is difficult to compare different dioceses, and no one knows how an “open window” law would play out in New York. And Hamilton predicted numerous victims could come forward in New York because advocacy groups and lawyers representing victims are so much better organized now than they were in 2002 when the church sex scandal broke.

To date, six dioceses in the United States have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection because of the sex abuse cases, though in California – which passed a New York-style law in 2002 – only one of 12 dioceses filed. The total settlement bill in California was $1.2 billion for about 1,000 cases that included about 200 that did not involve the Catholic Church.

Church leaders in California say the payout was devastating.

“What happened here was a financial tsunami,” said Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which was hit with a $720-million bill to settle 553 abuse cases. “We took a tough hit, and I don’t think we could take another.”

Check out the Newsday link for more details.