Bishops sued on child sex counts. Claim U.S. Catholic bishops held seminars to discredit claims and conceal priests’ records.
Church paid $5.2 million last year re Mons. Michael Harris

  He has claimed that bishops conspired over the past 30 years to protect priests who sexually abused children to "avoid detection, public disclosure and scandal".
  The lawsuit has been filed in the Superior Court in Orange County, California.
  It alleges that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops held seminars to show bishops and dioceses how to discourage and discredit claims of child sex abuse.
  The seminars also allegedly showed how to conceal or sanitise damaging records of accused abusers and how to transfer them without raising suspicion among congregations.

  Some experts say the writ is an innovative legal strategy to hold American bishops accountable. Others call it a legal grandstanding ploy with no credibility.
  The lawsuit follows a national wave of abuse cases involving priests which has tarnished the reputation of the Church recently.
  "This is an inevitable and logical conclusion to all that has been revealed in the past year," said Richard Sipe, a former priest and national authority on sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church.
  "There is good evidence that the bishops' conference has been aware of and consulted on sexual abuse issues."

  A lawyer for the bishops' conference called the suit frivolous, saying that the association of bishops never engaged in the kind of tactics alleged. Mark Chopko said the conference functioned like a professional association for bishops. It had no authority to enforce its policies and guidelines in the 165 autonomous dioceses in the US.
  The conference had been named only once before in a sexual abuse suit, but eventually was dropped as a defendant.
  "The premise that we're somehow involved is completely wrong — as a matter of law, a matter of fact

and a matter of equity," Mr Chopko said.
  Also named in the lawsuit filed by David Price are the Los Angeles and Orange dioceses and a Maryland treatment centre for clerics.
  Mr Price, 37, alleges that he was sexually abused as a teenager by Monsignor Michael Harris, his principal at school over a five-year period ending in 1983.

  The diocese of Los Angeles and Orange paid $5.2 million last year to settle abuse allegations by another plaintiff against Monsignor Harris. He has denied all allegations.
  Mr Price originally sued in 1994, alleging that Monsignor Harris molested him. A Superior Court judge rejected that case, saying the statute of limitations had expired.

  In the latest suit, the former Orange County resident claimed he dropped an appeal of his original case when diocesan lawyers used the threat of $60,000 in legal bills to persuade him to sign a release form.
  Mr Price now is charging the Diocese of Orange with fraud, saying Church lawyers called his first case against Monsignor Harris "unmeritorious". -- LOS ANGELES TIMES