HOUSTON (Legal Newsline) - A Texas man who settled an assault lawsuit against a former top official of the Baptist Convention in 2004 can sue the church over alleged sexual abuse that occurred before then despite a five-year statute of limitations in such cases, an appeals court ruled.
Plaintiff Gerald Rollins claims he repressed memories of the abuse by H. Paul Pressler III until he sued the church in 2017, thus tolling the statute of limitations. A dissenting judge on the three-justice appellate panel said the fact Rollins had sued Pressler more than a decade earlier and signed a $1,500-a-month settlement agreement demonstrated he was fully capable of suing the church then had he wanted to.
Pressler was on the Baptist Convention’s executive committee from 1984 to 1991, where he is reported to have steered the church in a more fundamentalist direction. A lawyer and former judge, Pressler has been sued by other men who accuse him of sexual abuse.
Rollins claims Pressler began molesting him in 1980 when he was 14, after they met at a Bible study group the Baptist official ran. The abuse continued for the next 24 years, Rollins claims. Pressler told him the relationship was divinely sanctioned but needed to be kept secret because only God would understand, Rollins alleged.
Rollins descended into drug abuse and crime in adolescence and adulthood and was convicted multiple times including for theft, driving while intoxicated and heroin possession. In 2003 he and Pressler got in an altercation in a Dallas hotel room and Rollins and his mother sued, claiming assault and violation of fiduciary duty. The two settled with Pressler agreeing to pay Rollins a total of $450,000 over many years.
Rollins sued Pressler again in 2017, also naming the Baptist Convention for allegedly condoning the abuse. The church moved to dismiss the case, citing the five-year statute of limitations, since Pressler and Rollins hadn’t had contact since 2004. A trial court granted the dismissal, but Rollins appealed.
In a February 25 decision, the First District Court of Appeals reversed. Writing for the two-judge majority, Justice Gordon Goodman ruled Rollins had provided enough evidence, including a psychiatric diagnosis, to show he was of unsound mind to halt the statute of limitations until he sued in 2017.
The Baptist Convention argued Rollins had to prove he was incompetent, but the appeals court disagreed. While Texas courts had ruled both ways over the years, the appeals court said, the most authoritative decisions put the burden of proof on the defendant. The church’s arguments that Rollins had held jobs, traveled, gone to jail, sued Pressler and signed a settlement agreement didn’t mean he was competent, Judge Goodman wrote.
“Though these admissions show he had the ability to manage his affairs to some extent, theydo not conclusively prove he had the mental capacity to sue the Convention before he filed the present suit,” the court ruled.
Justice Richard Hightower dissented, saying that while the allegations of sexual abuse “are undeniably horrific,” there was no reasonable dispute over whether Rollins was capable of suing for sexual abuse years before he did.
“Even taking as true Rollins’s claim that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol abuse, the Convention’s evidence sufficiently demonstrated that, in 2004,Rollins had the ability to participate in, control, and understand the instant lawsuit,” he wrote.
Judge Hightower also noted that Pressler agreed to pay Rollins’ attorney, Daniel Shea, $100,000 in the 2004 settlement, which his client signed in an acknowledgment he understood the terms. Shea represented Rollins when he sued again in 2017, this time claiming he was of unsound mind during the earlier suit.