Interesting Lawyers Podcast: Sex Abuse Cases v. Catholic Church, Cruise Lines and Jeffrey Epstein

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome back to the Interesting Lawyers podcast. I’m your host Russ Adler, and this is Episode 6. Now, this is a pretty new podcast, but I’m happy to tell you that I’m getting a lot of great feedback, not just from lawyers, but also from non -lawyers. And that’s really my intent. to present interesting, relevant,and current content that’s of interest to everybody. So it’s not just lawyer stuff, and not just basic stuff like that. We have a lot of interesting guests lined up, and one of the topics that we’re going to have some guests coming on the show soon about is the most interesting topic that I came across during 27 years of practice.

Between 1986 and 2013, I practiced law as a civil trial lawyer, tried about 200 jury trials during that time, and I had all kinds of cases. You know, a lot of car crashes, a lot of slip and falls, and things like that, but also things just got got more interesting for me.
One of the interesting parts of being a personal injury lawyer was that you never knew who was going to call you on any particular date or what kind of case that you would get.
And we hear about a lot of different cases, but that was kind of the thrill that I experienced. And fast forward to today, I don’t practice anymore, but I do work with law firms.
Of all all sorts. I advise them, I consult with them, I train their lawyers, I coach their lawyers. And I try to make everybody excellent or to fulfill whatever it is that their objectives could be.
And I’ve recently been asked, “What is the most fulfilling or rewarding type of case that you handled during your years of practice?” And the answer is… for me,
has always been, believe it or not, sexual abuse cases. Those cases did not involve physical injury most of the time.
They involve psychic injuries, post -traumatic stress disorder, things like that, but also very insidious injuries. These are very traumatic cases.
They affect the people who undergo physical injuries. it, who are known as survivors, very, very permanently and badly,
and they affect different people differently. But just being able to help these people achieve some form of closure and hopefully some form of compensation,
which sometimes I was able to get and sometimes I wasn’t, was just really rewarding to me as a lawyer. lawyer. And I know that my peers who continue to practice and handle these cases, some of which you’re going to hear from in future episodes,
they will tell you the same thing. So with that said, I’d like to share a couple of stories from you about how I got involved in sex abuse cases and the types of cases and how it ended up.
Because at the very end of my career, I was fortunate enough to be involved. in several of the cases against Jeffrey Epstein, which is a very relevant story to this day,
even though it began about 15 years ago. But before I get to that, I want to take you back to about 1998 or 1999. I got a call one day from a guy who lived in Fort Lauderdale.
He rode his bike to and from work. I think he worked on a boat, and every day he would ride his bike past a particular Catholic church. Even though he’s not Catholic,
he was riding his bike past the church one day, and the pastor is standing outside and introduced himself, stopped him, and said, “Hi, I’m Father Joe, very friendly man, and tried to engage my guy in conversation,
and invited him to come in and see the church, to which my guy client responded, “Well, sorry, Father, I’m Baptist, I’m not Catholic.” And Father Joe said,
“Well, that’s okay, you should still come and see it anyway.” Well, not really interested, but thanks anyway. And then over the next several weeks, it would seem that every time that my client was riding his bike home past the church,
Father Joe would be standing outside. and it was always the same thing. Father Joe would stop him, engagement, conversation, “Hi, how are you?” Offer him to show him the church.
He politely declined, and he just thought it was getting a little bit strange. And what prompted this man to hire me was an incident that happened one day when he got home from work.
and there’s an envelope in his mailbox with his name on it and he opens the envelope and in it is a polaroid photograph and the top of the photograph had been cut off but it was stuck onto the back of the photograph not sure with what but the bottom half showed a man masturbating.
And when he realized that the top of the photo was behind it, he pulled it apart and lo and behold, it was Father Joe. So when this man came to me to hire me,
it wasn’t because he had been molested. It wasn’t because he had been injured, although he was somewhat traumatized, and he asked me to help him. And all I could think of to do to help.
him was to file a lawsuit seeking an injunction against Father Joe. So he would just leave this man alone. That’s really all he wanted. And I told the guy,
“Look, you know, if I can get him to leave you alone, I’m happy to do it. I don’t want your money. You know, I think you’re fortunate that that’s all that happened and I’m sorry that you went through this.” But the one thing I did do before I filed it is I called my father Joe.
Carmel Caferro. Carmel, who unfortunately recently passed, was a top -notch investigative reporter for Channel 7 News in Miami. She did a lot of exposés.
She did a lot of investigative reporting. I had been introduced to her through a mutual acquaintance, and I thought that this might be an interesting story. And lo and behold, it certainly was. So,
fast forward a couple weeks later, it turns out Father Joe had been transferred to a parish in Hollywood and he’s walking on the property of the parish and all of a sudden out of a unmarked white van pops Carmel Caffero with her cameraman Anthony and a microphone and the photo and she holds up the photo and says Father Joe is this you in the photo?
Well Father Joe denied that. He said it was not him, but it clearly was. And that’s when we filed where we served our lawsuit on the Archdiocese of Miami,
for whom he worked, and on Father Joe. That night, it was the top story on the 10 o ‘clock edition of the Channel 7 News,
which for years and at that time was a top rated news station in South Florida. And the next day, my phone started ringing with men,
three men who saw the story on television, saw the news story, and they remembered Father Joe because all three of them had had been altar boys at a parish in Miami where he had been serving at the time and all three of them had been molested by Father Joe when they were children and now these adult men who were still very much affected by what had happened to them felt empowered to come forward because back when
they were boys Father Joe told them don’t tell anyone about this And when you’re a Catholic and the human embodiment of Jesus Christ, which is how these pastors and priests are described to them,
they were uncomfortable. They didn’t feel that anyone would believe them if they came forward, and so they didn’t. And I came to learn over the years, that’s a very common thing, not just with clergy sex abuse,
with any sex abuse. It always happens behind closed doors. doors. It always happens in private, and the perpetrator always denies it.
And these children never thought anyone would believe them, and so they suffered with the consequences of what happened to them at the hands of Father Joe until they saw this story.
And this new story empowered them to come forward and contact me. And so, when I filed these lawsuits,
I was contacted by the Archdiocese of Miami. They said, “Well, we’d like to come and speak with you, to come meet you in your office.” And so three priests from the Archdiocese came to visit me in my law office,
which at the time was in Fort Lauderdale. And they told me that they wanted to… resolve our claims. Now at the time, there was a statute of limitations that barred,
that time barred our claims. And they still wanted to resolve the case, but they were first quick to remind me that the statute of limitations has expired on these,
which I felt was horrendous that they would even bring that up in light of what had happened, in light of what they… they had learned. But they were motivated and they wanted to resolve it.
And my clients had told me, “Look, forget about the money. We don’t want this to happen again to anyone.” And so what I told the priest,
the main priest who was there with the other two from the Archdiocese was, “Look, more important than money.” we want this guy defrocked He has no business of course Not only just coming on to people and sending them lewd photographs But of course what he did at the time was a crime whether the statute of limitations has expired or not the response From the the priest who was in my office was well We can’t can’t do
that,” to which I responded, “Well, who can?” And he said, “That can only be done from Rome.” And I said, “Look, that’s your issue. Contact Rome and have this guy defrocked.” And of course,
he was not defrocked, at least not at the time. And so we went on to resolve those cases in about 1999 with the Archdiocese,
not for a lot of money. not for what they were really worth, because the statute of limitations had expired, and we knew that if we did not resolve them,
they could be dismissed for being too old. Now fortunately, Florida has wiped out the statute of limitations for sexual abuse. It would not have been a problem had these claims been brought today.
But back in 1998 -1998, 1999, it was certainly an issue, and it was a bar. And my clients were as satisfied as people can be resolving a claim like that.
Of course, post -traumatic stress disorder is a permanent condition. It’s not something that can be cured. And it’s something that tends to haunt people throughout their lives.
When anything out of the ordinary happens, it could be a birth, a death, or a breakup of a relationship. relationship. It could be a lot of different things, but it’s kind of like the gift that keeps on giving in the sense that it keeps coming back and plaguing people who have been exposed to things that are outside of the ordinary.
Sex abuse clearly falls into that category. Fast forward to about 2000. In the year 2000, Greenberg Trawrig, the law firm, in Boston, filed the Boston law firm.
Archdiocese case. This was a case that at the time was a groundbreaking case. It was a very highly publicized case, a very famous case, and it put the issue of clergy sex abuse on the National Forefront and certainly in the headlines for a long time.
And as soon as that happened, I was at a gas station one day. I remember this very well. I was filling up my car and I get a phone call from a Miami Herald reporter and they say, “Aren’t you the guy who had that case against the Archdiocese a few years ago?” And I said,
“Yes, I was.” And guess what? The next day, I was on the cover of the Miami Herald and they were writing about my case, even though it had been about two years ago. And even though the cases were resolved,
they wanted to find someone local to write about, to give a local angle to this national news story about the Boston Diocese. And from that point on,
I was “on the map” from a publicity perspective. I got many calls and I got many sex abuse cases against the Archdiocese of Miami,
having to do with various different priests. At that time, because I knew that, you know, they were a formidable entity and I’m sure they had really heavy and experienced lawyers.
I reached out to get some help to a man named Jeffrey Anderson, who is a lawyer in Minneapolis, who to this day is a nationally prominent lawyer,
who really headed up the sex abuse litigation against the archdiocese, back in the ’90s, and even today. And, at the time, Jeff was very… famous and he was very noteworthy,
especially because he was able to get the cardinal of Los Angeles indicted over a sex abuse crisis they were having in Los Angeles. But it started to come out that this was a systemic problem in the Catholic Church,
not just in the United States, but all over the country. And so for me, it was a great idea. I certainly don’t want to say adventure, but it was an incredible experience working with Jeff Anderson,
you know, and I told him, you know, Jeff, it’s incredible that, you know, the Archbishop of a local diocese does not have the power, or so they claim, to defrock a priest who has been accused of sex abuse,
to which Jeff’s response was something I’ve never forgotten, all roads lead lead to Rome.” It all goes back to Rome, and at the time it was Pope John Paul II was the pope in charge,
and he was pretty widely known among the legal community that he really wasn’t doing much to address this problem or to deal with this problem. Instead,
he had a cardinal who was taking care of these things and basically sweeping it under the rug, and that cardinal’s name was Joseph Ratzinger. Well,
when Pope John Paul II passed, Cardinal Ratzinger became the next pope. I believe it was Pope Benedict. And that’s when we knew that because of who they selected,
we didn’t expect any radical or seismic changes in the Catholic Church. Church to deal with this sex abuse problem. And as many of the listeners may have heard,
this continues to go on today. The big story these days is that these archdioceses, that’s how you say it in plural, have sought refuge and protection from the bankruptcy courts,
filing for bankruptcy. And that’s an interesting angle. as well. But you know, the other interesting part of handling these sex abuse cases against the Catholic Church is that they raise these constitutional defenses.
There’s a couple of clauses in the U .S. Constitution. One is called the Free Exercise Clause, which allows religions to conduct themselves the way that they please and to govern themselves the way they please.
That’s the Free Exercise Clause. and there’s also the Establishment Clause of the U .S. Constitution, which gives churches and religious institutions certain freedoms. These were actually raised as defenses in the litigation that we had going against the Catholic Church,
until finally the Florida Supreme Court said, “Listen, you may be a religion and you may have discretion and leeway to run your church, but sex abuse is not something that’s part of the deal.” No,
you cannot do that. It’s illegal. It’s a crime. It’s a felony. And you can’t get away with it that way. And that was a big help to lawyers like me who represented survivors.
And so for about 10 years, I was involved in these archdiocese cases. And during that time, I got a lot of publicity. My name was in the newspapers. For those of you who may remember what newspapers are,
use on television. and that’s just part of handling these cases. These are cases where it behooved lawyers to go to the press, to be on TV as much as they can, to get the word out against whichever priest they had a case against because that would empower other survivors to come forward and bring their claims and that’s exactly what happened.
So, as a result of handling these archdiocese cases, I got all sorts of other sex abuse cases because I became known as the local guy who handled these cases.
And another type of sex abuse case that I started getting had to do with cruise ships. And it started with an older lady who was in a cabin with her husband on a ship sleeping one night,
and she felt something down below. And she was startled when she saw– looked down and she saw this guy’s hair and it was a crew member and as soon as she started screaming he took off and they were never she reported it but they were never able to identify the crew member because it happened at night and one of the things that I found out about cruise ships I’ve only been on a few cruises is that the crew has
to have keys to the cabins in case the ship’s going down and they have to get you out of the cabin so these crew members had access to all of the cabins and doing some homework and due diligence I found out that this was a problem in the cruise industry.
You know, it really didn’t surprise me when I found out why and why is that. Because for those who have been on cruises and maybe those who have not, many of the crew members are from other countries. They’re from India,
they’re from Asia, they’re from South Asia particularly. particularly and the way it works is they’ll do these tours on a cruise ship They’ll be at sea for months and months at a time or even longer away from their families away from their loved ones and it’s lonely at sea and Who else is on cruise ships?
passengers Passengers who want to go on the cruise ships have a good time Drink party not not worry about driving. Have a good time time, stay up all night, and have fun.
And that has proven to be a bit of a toxic mix, because not surprisingly, what I discovered is there’s a lot of sex that goes on on cruise ships between crew members and passengers,
even though the crew members are told as a rule, do not have sex with passengers. Despite that, a lot of sex… goes on between crew members and passengers.
A lot of it’s consensual. And a lot of it isn’t. And just recently, cruise lines were made to start reporting the incidents,
the number of sexual assault or sex crimes that involve crew members. And there are statistics that have been published about that. But like any other statistics on sexual assault,
it is widely known that many sexual assaults go unreported. Perhaps because of embarrassment or shame or fear that the person will not be believed.
But once there became a greater awareness of these cases and this problem, lawyers like me started to get cases like that,
and I did handle several cases. against cruise ships for sexual assaults. The other common thread about sexual assault cases on cruise ships, it might not surprise you to hear this,
is it usually happens the last night of the cruise. Because what crew member wants to be stuck at sea on a ship with a passenger that they have raped or they have assaulted?
So, when these things happen, it’s usually the last night of the cruise. When they get reported, the cruise lines will make contact with law enforcement and the FBI will be waiting at the port to board the ship and conduct an investigation.
The only problem with that is that most of the time, or a lot of the time, the passenger has been drunk.
Drugged with what? Well, sometimes drugged with the most common drug that is used to facilitate sexual assault. And that’s alcohol.
And there’s lots of that flowing on cruise ships. We all know that. Sometimes it’s voluntary, sometimes not. Sometimes crew members will use date rape drugs.
but they’re always sure to use the ones with the shortest half -life. And what that means is that when there is a blood draw from a sexual assault victim who’s claiming that they were assaulted,
it’s a matter of time between when something was slipped in their drink and the time the blood draw is taken because if the half -life has expired, the blood sample is going to come up negative.
negative. So not surprisingly, in a lot of these investigations, it becomes a “he said, she said” between the crew member who even denies that anything happened and the passenger who says that it did.
And those cases are usually not charged or prosecuted unless there are visible signs of forcible entry. And that’s part of the rape kit and the rape examination that is done on people.
who report that they have been raped or sexually assaulted. But it also stands to reason that someone who has been incapacitated by a date rape drug isn’t going to resist because they can’t,
because they’re out of it. And sadly, the last case that I handled was against royal Caribbean, it was a family that went on a cruise, on the last night of the cruise,
their daughter. daughter, who was, I think she was over 18, but she’s on the ship, and she had befriended a wine steward on the ship.
And on the last night of the cruise, he asked her if she would like to join him privately for a drink. She said yes. He brings her into a crew kitchen. They start drinking some champagne.
He cracks open a bottle of champagne, they’re drinking it. The next thing she knows, she wakes up. She’s on the floor, undressed, and he’s on top of her.
And she screams to get off of me, and he did get off of her. She reports it. They get back to port. The FBI boards the ship, interviews her, interviews him. Charges nobody.
Why? Because there’s nothing in her blood. And there’s no visible signs of forcible entry on the examination. So she sent on her way,
and the only justice she was able to get turned out to be from hiring me. And we filed a lawsuit against the cruise line, and then I learned another thing about this.
As soon as a crew member, at least back at the time, was accused of a sexual assault, they would immediately be terminated for following or for breaking the rules of the cruise line. and sent back to the country from once they came.
This guy was from India. He was nowhere to be found. He was nowhere to be served. Eventually, Royal Caribbean did produce him by video teleconference at the time,
and he was in India. And what he said was, “Yes, we did have sex, and no, we should not, we should not have done that.” that. I did get fired because of it, but she did consent.
And so the whole case came down to whether or not my client consented to the sexual activity with this crew member in this crew kitchen. And she had been terribly affected by this.
She did have other psych issues. She was on medications. And when you have someone who’s already compromised that way, way, they are the most vulnerable. And oftentimes,
those are the ones the crew member is going to pick out, because they have their best chances with them. And as horrible as that sounded, that’s what happened. That case got settled for a lot of money, but it didn’t erase or undo what had happened to my client,
who had attempted suicide on multiple occasions after this, and really just went off the deal. end, even more than before.
And you know, I got to tell you, helping her and helping her family through this, really for me, that’s what lawyers are for.
Lawyers help people solve their problems. But when it comes to things like this, it was a hard fought fight. And it was very satisfying at the end that I was able to to get her some measure of justice.
But unfortunately, not enough justice, because to this day, these things go on all the time on cruise ships. And I know the cruise lines don’t want to talk about it,
but I’m glad that they have to report them, and I think that’s a good start. But it’s still a very flourishing industry for certain lawyers who handle these cases against the cruise lines.
and I wish them well. It is a righteous cause. So after that case, I was handling another sexual assault case involving a young girl who had been molested by a close friend of her family who was spending some time with her,
I think babysitting for her or watching her, whatever, and he had molested her. And, of course, course, it was the same story. She told the parents, they called the police,
he denied it. There was no visible signs of forcible entry. There was nothing in the blood. It was he said, she said, and because criminal cases have to be provable beyond the exclusion of every reasonable doubt,
the police will many times not charge because they don’t think they can prove the case to that standard. So they didn’t take that case either. But I did.
And that case ended up going to trial in Palm Beach County, Florida. And I got a $27 million verdict against this man who did this to her.
Um, insurance does not cover intentional acts like like sexual assault, so there was no insurance for it, and the man didn’t really have any assets, but because it was a nice family and a nice girl,
and being a father of daughters myself, I had a soft spot in my heart. I wanted to do the right thing. I took that case, and I didn’t care if we ever made any money about it or not. And you know, Jeff Anderson,
who to this day is probably the Dean of Sex Assault Litigation, told me on many – occasions, he said, “You know, if you told me in advance that I was going to lose every one of these cases,
I would still take every single one of them.” And I didn’t forget that. So I took this case against this guy, I got a $27 million verdict, and I didn’t get paid anything.
He ended up filing for bankruptcy. And my client didn’t get anything either. But I will tell you this, we still won the battle because my client’s mother told me that having six strangers,
six people on a jury who did not know my client, come back and find that this really happened and that they believed this little girl,
they believed her. That was the most therapeutic thing. That was the most wonderful thing that had happened to this girl. girl from a mental health perspective.
And to this day, I understand she’s doing quite well. Although the scars from that will never, ever be forgotten. And even though I never got any of the 27 million from that case,
I did get a phone call, and the phone call I got was from a young lawyer named Brad Edwards. And I knew– Brad from the gym, actually. I’d see him at the gym, “Hey, how you doing? We work out together,” and all of that.
And he said to me, “I saw your verdict in New York Times. The New York Times picked it up and wrote about it.” And he said, “Perhaps you could help me.
I have several sex abuse cases against this billionaire named Jeffrey Epstein.” [BLANK _AUDIO] So I said well come over and let’s have lunch. He came over,
we had lunch, he ends up joining the firm and I worked on the Jeffrey Epstein cases with him for several months until our law firm blew up and he went off and did his own thing and to this day about 12 or 13 years later he’s still involved in litigation pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein.
Brad Edwards. Brad is going to be a guest on the Interesting Lawyers podcast. He’s in trial right now. He had to reschedule, but you’ll be hearing from him on this podcast.
I’ve also reached out to a federal prosecutor who has prosecuted human trafficking and sex trafficking cases, which we’re hearing a lot about that these days as member of the public,
because sexual abuse cases remain on the fourth forefront of our society and of our media outlets, because these are not just one -off things.
These are things that sometimes corporate players, companies, whole industries are involved in the trafficking of minors for sex purposes. At the time,
well, now that we’re recording this podcast episode, I know that certain names have been released from the Jeffrey Epstein cases of people whose names have come up from the evidence.
And it’s still a very popular subject and topic, and it’s not over yet. The sex abuse litigation for the survivors survivors have been concluded for the most part as far as I know,
and it turns out there were many, many survivors of what Jeffrey Epstein pulled off with the help of Ghislaine Maxwell. All I could tell you is about 12 years ago,
when I saw the flight manifest and I saw the other evidence, I’m thinking, “Why the hell isn’t this guy in jail?” And I think the answer to that is because he hired a team of superstars superstar lawyers who were able to cut him a sweetheart deal with the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office to where Jeffrey Epstein spent weekends at the Palm Beach jail and then during the week he was allowed to go to an office
which I thought was horrendous. So the sweet justice from this all took a long time to come but as I’m sure you know Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his jail cell some say say it’s suicide.
There were some theories that maybe it wasn’t a suicide. But no great loss to humanity when it comes to that. And Ghislaine Maxwell is now serving 20 years. And now,
those same lawyers are concluding litigation, or have concluded litigation, against some of the brokerage houses that handle Jeffrey Epstein’s money, apparently when you’re ultra -wealthy,
these fiduciaries assign handlers to you to make sure you’re not running a criminal industry, we’re not doing improper things with the money, and apparently they dropped the ball and have had multi -million dollar settlements as well,
or have paid multi -million dollar settlements. And so, you know, sex abuse, it’s not just necessarily one person and another person. These things are often facilitated by institutions.
institutions like the Catholic Church and by investment houses like the ones that allegedly were involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking of minors in between his properties in different states and in the Virgin Islands.
And that litigation, I believe it’s continuing to this date. So, I just wanted to visit with my audience and share this most interesting story with you and let you know that in a future episode,
hopefully not too far off, we’ll be speaking to Brad Edwards and hearing firsthand about his relentless pursuit of Jeffrey Epstein and the book he wrote with the same title and that’s all I have for today.
I just wanted to share that with you. I’m going to do some more solo podcasts in time about other interesting stories and topics that are relevant and current and of great interest and really of great importance.
So thanks for listening. That’s a wrap for episode six of the Interesting Lawyers Podcast. Thank you so much. for tuning in. Please be sure to follow me and to follow this podcast on YouTube if you want to watch the video or on Apple podcasts or Spotify.
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my listeners. listeners. Thank you so much and I’ll see you next time.