STEVEN SPIELBERG: The other thing we have that we have to think about is this: Hollywood
and celebrity gets a lot of recognition.
You can't just think of this as a Hollywood problem, and we can't forget the people that
can't afford attorneys.
We can't forget those people that are afraid to come out to say what happened to them because
they have nobody to represent them or to stand up for them.
I'm more concerned about that group than I am about the celebrities that are being exposed
and immediately get a huge amount of attention.
But that attention takes away from the rank and file, where these kind of crimes of sexual
assault are happening daily.
LILA ROSE: In this interview with Brian Hurley, an attorney who brought charges against Catholic
Church leaders for covering up the sexual abuse of children, you'll learn about the
two cases Hurley brought against Planned Parenthood
for failing to report the rape of teenage girls.
BRIAN HURLEY: I will tell you, I grossly underestimated what I was getting involved in.
I had been involved in very complex litigation for many years as lead counsel and I thought
that would prepare me for litigating against Planned Parenthood and I was wrong.
Planned Parenthood when it is sued hires the best lawyers in the United States.
Planned Parenthood will fund the defense of litigation in a manner that, from what I could
tell in our cases, that was limitless.
In both of our cases, Planned Parenthood's lawyers fought every single issue, every aspect
of discovery, every aspect of the case was litigated, much more so, in fact, than I had
seen in any of the other cases I had been involved with in my thirty-five years.
Which, I think from my perspective, and this was argued throughout our pleadings,
was an attempt to make it prohibitively expensive for us to continue.
The majority of the plaintiffs in these cases are very poor people or people from backgrounds
where they don't have much money, and it's hard to find lawyers who are willing to spend
six years litigating against an organization that is going to require you to devote thousands
of hours to litigate those claims, and I think that is something that Planned Parenthood
and its lawyers are very good at.
Planned Parenthood views these cases as attacks on the right to choose to have an abortion,
and so that, while a case on its own may not seem to have those types of implications,
I believe Planned Parenthood's approach to litigation is that every case could have an
impact and a woman's right to choose an abortion, and for that reason they fight every case very strongly.
Denise, when I first met her was sixteen years old.
Denise's father sexually abused her repeatedly and often for at least three years.
It turned out that she was pregnant.
So her father took her to Planned Parenthood to have an abortion.
The Planned Parenthood employee said to her something to the effect, "If you're going
to sleep around, you need to get on birth control," and Denise was stunned, and she
took that as really an insult that she was being called a whore.
And so what Denise said she said in response was, "This was not supposed to happen.
I was forced to do things I didn't want to do."
As soon as I heard her say that, it was clear to me that they had a duty to report suspected abuse.
I think known abuse, but at least suspected abuse.
They didn't, and her father continued to rape her for another year.
Had they reported Denise's abuse, immediately the abuse would have stopped because her father
would have been arrested and ultimately convicted like he was.
Unfortunately, it was a year later.
Chelsea was thirteen years old. She was a member of a soccer team coached by a man named John Haller.
Mr. Haller pursued her and eventually ended up having a sexual relationship with her,
convincing her that he was in love with her and that ultimately they would be married.
John Haller was in his twenties at the time, I think twenty-three years old, something
like that.
Not surprising, Chelsea became pregnant and Mr. Haller realized that he was going to be
in serious trouble if that it was ever disclosed.
So he convinced Chelsea to have an abortion, and told her that that was the only way they
could stay together, that he loved her and if she had the abortion they would stay together
and at least, she thought, would get married.
The abortion is performed, and shortly thereafter, Mr. Haller has sex with Chelsea one more time
and then tells her, "It's over."
The claims that we brought on behalf of Chelsea and her parents against Planned Parenthood
were: one was a failure to report suspected abuse, two, the failure to obtain the consent of
her parents for the abortion or even notify them, three was the failure to meet their
requirement to have Chelsea seen by a doctor more than twenty-four hours prior to
the abortion.
She wasn't informed properly of the risks of an abortion, as well as, we believe, was
given misinformation about those risks.
Planned Parenthood was taking the position that while a woman or a child who had an abortion
could have short-term psychological issues—guilt, those sorts of things—that in fact there
was really no long-term implications from a psychological point of view.
We had talked with a number of experts who said that was nonsense.
That many women—and we didn't say all—but many women have long term psychological harm
caused by having abortions.
We, through one of my co-counsel, contacted a woman here in Cincinnati who was and is
an expert on psychological harm, primarily posttraumatic stress.
She evaluated Chelsea and found, if I recall correctly, posttraumatic stress, depression,
suicidal ideation and made the correlation that her suicidal attempts were related directly
to the abortion that was a game-changer in that case.
We had already, I believe at that point, gotten a judgment against Planned Parenthood for
failure to do the twenty-four hour requirement with respect to the doctor, so we had a judgment
already, and the issue was going to be what were the damages at that point.
I don't know what went on at Planned Parenthood at that point, but this is my belief, I believe
that Planned Parenthood could not risk having a judgment against them in which a—really a
renowned psychologist, pro-choice psychologist was going to opine that there's a causal connection
between abortion and those forms of psychological harm, and I think that in part changed how
they decided they wanted to proceed.
"Abortion distortion" occurs in cases where claims are made against abortion providers
where principles of law that, I believe, are well settled are not deemed to be well settled
anymore by the court.
They look at some of those principles and, in fact, apply the law in a way that is contrary
to what the law has been applied in other contexts.
We went to the Supreme Court of Ohio to get documents to support our claim that Planned
Parenthood had a pattern and practice of not reporting abuse.
The court found that these were medical records and it was more important to protect the privacy
of the women who were the subjects of those reports then it was for us to get the information.
Those sorts of arguments would never fly, for example, in a case involving age discrimination
or sex discrimination.
Those sorts of documents are routinely produced with redacted information, so that the plaintiffs
are being able to show a pattern and practice.
So we saw first hand what I think was an example of the abortion distortion, and that is: had
we sought these types of records in other types of claims I believe we would have gotten
them, but because this claim involved abortion—and there were many amicus briefs filed with respect
to this—we lost. And so we lost a key component of our case.
I first really started thinking about the phrase "Abortion Distortion" when I read a
part of a case that was written by a former Supreme Court justice O'Connor and here's
what she said, "This Court's abortion decisions have already
worked a major distortion in the courts constitutional jurisprudence.
Today's decision goes further and makes it painfully clear that no legal rule or doctrine
is safe from ad-hoc nullification by this court when an occasion for its application
arises in a case involving state regulation of abortion.
The permissible scope of abortion regulation is not the only constitutional issue on which
this Court is divided, but—except when it comes to abortion—the court has generally
refused to let such disagreements, however longstanding or deeply felt, prevent it from
evenhandedly applying uncontroversial legal doctrines to cases that come before it."
I think it's hypocritical for Planned Parenthood to take a position about how
important it is to report suspected and known abuse.
They need to look in the mirror, and if they really want to expose this type of horrendous
conduct, they need to clean it up.
While they're correct in terms of the way they have handled and exposed or attempted
to expose the abuse that took place in the Catholic Church, up in Michigan State, and now
even in the "Me Too" movement, I think that's great.
What I find to be hypocritical is the media's refusal to do a serious investigation of what
occurs at Planned Parenthood.
There's been enough information provided to the press with Lila Rose, for example, when
she did her exposÄs both with respect to the attempts in those situations, based upon
the videos I saw, of people at Planned Parenthood coaching girls not to say certain things so
that they wouldn't have to report abuse.
Also, the videos that talked about the sex trafficking and the prostitution, clearly
the mainstream media has decided that they don't want to expose—or do an investigation
of—to find out what is actually going on at Planned Parenthood.
You know I—in my experience, what I would say to people is this: I'm a devout Catholic,
and I believe the Catholic Church had to be taken to task for what it did and didn't do
with respect to the abuse of boys—mostly boys.
And I was proud as being part of a prosecuting attorney's office that we brought claims,
charges against the Archdiocese of Cincinnati for its conduct.
And I think it gave me credibility, because what I would say to people is this: if I as
a devout Catholic would participate in the prosecution of the Catholic Church for what
its role was in the failure to report abuse, then I have no problems trying to expose what
Planned Parenthood does and doesn't do.
And the fact of the matter is, I get sick and tired of hearing people say about all
the great things that Planned Parenthood does.
If you look at the narrative with respect to Planned Parenthood, the narrative always
comes back to, "Look at all the good things we do.
Look at all the medical care we provide.
Look at all the help we give for example on breast cancer screening," which, quite frankly,
is not accurate either.
My view that is "So what?"
Assuming it's all true, assume it's all true.
The fact that you do good things doesn't mean you get a pass on the bad things you do.