Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
A Houston judge has ruled that a $1 million defamation lawsuit filed by the self-proclaimed Queen of Honky Tonk and her husband against a former supporter of their Angleton pro-animal rights farm is frivolous and awarded the couple to pay $57,000 in lawyer fees and penalties to the defendant.
For months, accused pedophile priest Rudy Kos had evaded reporter Brooks Egerton. But the night before his vacation trek to New Mexico comes a call: Rudy Kos wanted to talk. And talk he did.
Dallas lawyer Sylvian Demarest could have spent another lifetime representing the victims of pedophile priests. Instead, she decided to bequeath her years of research on the matter to help protect future generations of potential victims.
Twenty years ago this month, an extraordinary trial took place in a Dallas County court. It pitted 10 young men and the family of another against the Dallas Catholic Diocese. The issue was serial sexual abuse by Rudy Kos, a priest and pedophile whose transgressions had been ignored for years. The resulting verdict of $119 million was a record for its time; but the dramatic 14-week trial helped expose to international public scrutiny the clear and present danger of a pedophile population within the priesthood that had been protected for decades, both by the church bureaucracy and the public trust. This special Texas Lawbook report by Bruce Tomaso tells the story of the trial of Rudy Kos, a remarkable and historic tale of courtroom justice.
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