The abuse spotlight moves back to the West Coast today, as more documents were released. The LA Times story:

The newly released documents were prepared by church lawyers in connection with efforts to settle the pending cases. Known as proffers, they represent what the church would be prepared to concede in the settlement talks.

They are summaries of the church’s personnel files with much information deleted, including names of parents or other parishioners who complained about the priests, victims’ names, many details about the alleged conduct or about therapy that the priests may have undergone. They also do not include names of church officials who were warned about the priests but failed to notify authorities and parishioners about their suspicions.

Lawyers for the accused priests earlier this year, had blocked an attempt by the archdiocese to release the documents. But late last month, a state appellate court said the church could release the information. A lawyer for many of the accused priests said he continued to object. "Any disclosure from personnel files violates the employee’s right of privacy and ignores the legal process," said attorney Donald Steier. The church’s move to release the information was a "public relations decision," he said.

Plaintiffs lawyers, who have sought to have the church’s full personnel files released publicly, have said the proffers are inadequate. They say the documents were designed, in part, to shield the church from public release of more information about how the archdiocese had responded to complaints about wayward priests. Legal battles continue over whether the church’s full personnel files must be released.

"In the sanitized form that it’s in, [the proffers are] more information than victims have had in the past. But it pales in comparison to the truth," said Raymond P. Boucher, lead attorney for the plaintiffs suing the archdiocese.

"Based on the documents that we’ve seen, based on the investigations that we’ve conducted, based on the police reports that have been made public, this is a scant glimpse into the truth," he said. "They reveal decades of participation by the archdiocese in molesting children

Here are the documents (pdf file)

And here is something else I ran across that’s rather interesting. It’s the Archdiocese’s spin site, called LA Clergy Cases. It’s got links to all the documents so far, plus a lengthy section on "media myths" related to abuse.

I think I get it now. I get why the LA Archdiocese seems fairly unconcerned with its laughably miniscule number of ordinations (five last year) and is all set to go forth with a full-force emphasis on lay parish leadership. No priests, no lawsuits, right? The lay employees truly are employees, not the responsibility of the Church that formed, evaluated and supports them.

Kidding. Kidding.

Sort of.