A Superior Court judge in California on Monday ordered the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to release internal records about sex abuse without redacting the names of the accused priests, the LA Times reports. The order overturned a previous judge’s decision to allow the church to redact the names.
In making the order Monday, Judge Emilie H. Elias reversed a key part of a 2011 ruling by a retired judge who said he feared including the names of the hierarchy could be used to embarrass the church further. Elias said the public’s right to know how the archdiocese, the largest in the nation, handled molestation allegations outweighed such concerns. She also reversed retired Judge Dickran Tevrizian’s ruling that priests who had faced only a single allegation of abuse would have their names blacked out.
