Committee lawyers requested that the survivors’ statements not be transcribed by a court reporter. Typically, all parts of federal court cases are transcribed by official stenographers.

As the Baltimore diocese’s case advances in federal bankruptcy court, scores of lawsuits filed under the Child Victims Act involving other defendants have inundated Maryland courts. Complaints targeted private schools and public school systems, correctional facilities for children, and churches. They allege abuse by teachers, guards, priests and others in positions of authority over children.

Almost as quickly as the Baltimore diocese declared bankruptcy, the neighboring Archdiocese of Washington challenged the child victims law as unconstitutional. The legal fight first came up in a lawsuit filed in Prince George’s County Circuit Court, where three men say in a proposed class-action lawsuit that they were sexually assaulted as children by employees of the Washington diocese, which is headquartered in Hyattsville, and that their torment fit a broader pattern of abuse and coverup by the church.

A circuit court judge denied the Washington diocese’s request to throw out the lawsuit, saying she believed the child victims law is constitutional.

Taking advantage of a provision in the law allowing for a mid-lawsuit appeal, the Washington diocese said it planned to promptly take its legal challenge to the intermediate Appellate Court of Maryland and then to the state’s Supreme Court. Experts expect Maryland’s high court to ultimately settle constitutional questions about the law.

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(Baltimore Sun reporter Jonathan M. Pitts contributed to this article.)

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(Baltimore Sun reporter Jonathan M. Pitts contributed to this article.)

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