Advertising for victims as clients

Slater’s Manhattan offices may have views of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, spiritual home of New York City’s Catholic archdiocese, but ground zero for his church abuse lawsuit operation is a call center, of sorts, about an hour’s drive away in suburban Long Island, in an office building overlooking a parking lot.

There, headset-wearing paralegals in a dozen cubicles answer calls in response to ads on talk radio and cable TV news channels pleading: “If you were sexually abused by a member of the clergy, even if it happened decades ago you may be entitled to financial compensation.”

That pitch spoke to 57-yearold Ramon Mercado, who had long kept silent about the abuse he suffered in the 1970s, in part because he didn’t want to upset his devout Catholic mother. Since her recent death, he’s ready to talk about the New York City priest who invited him into his Plymouth sedan to warm up on a cold day and ended up molesting him hundreds of times over the next three years.

“I was sitting in my living room and someone came on TV, ‘If you’ve been molested, act now,’“Mercado said. “After so many years, I said, ‘Why not?’”

When such calls come in, the paralegals are trained to press for details but to do so gently.

“What age would you say you were?”

“Ten or 11? OK. Would you remember the face if you saw it?”

“He would take you out of your bed? What did he say when he came to get you?”

“Do you want to take a break? Are you OK? Are you sure?”

The next step is to get a lawyer on the line to see if it’s a case they can take to court. Slater says that out of the more than 3,000 calls his firm has taken leading up to and since the opening of New York’s one-year window, it has signed up nearly 300 clients, and expects another 200 by the middle of next year.

One recent day, lawyers talked to at least a half-dozen potential plaintiffs by lunchtime, with one saying she was raped at a first communion party and another saying a priest sodomized him after he was told to pull down his pants so his temperature could be taken.

One plaintiff still smells the alcohol on the priest’s breath decades later. Another says he can still hear the priest approaching his classroom as he came to get him, the squeak of shoes in the school hallway.

One man called with his story and later killed himself. A terminally ill woman called from a hospice care center — “I’ve been holding this in my whole life.“

Many of the accusations involve those already identified by dioceses as “credibly accused” — there are 5,173 priests, lay persons and other clergy member that meet that standard, according to a recent AP tally. Those are the easy cases.

But many others are like Mercado’s, involving priests never accused publicly before, some long dead. And so that turns lawyers into cold-case investigators, calling retired Catholic school teachers and retired rectory staff, combing through yearbooks and, in Mercado’s case, tracking down missionary workers who went on the priest’s overseas trips.

“This type of case isn’t for every law firm. It’s not a hit-inthe-rear car accident,” Slater said. “There is work to be done.”

And money to be made. For his fee, Slater said he plans to ask for a full third of any awards his clients collect and he’s been spending in anticipation, hiring a half-dozen new paralegals, opening an office in New Jersey and breaking a wall in Long Island to make more room.

One of the lawyers eating pizza, Steven Alter, pushed back when asked if the people coming forward are just in it for the money.

“It’s not a cash grab,” he said. “They want to have a voice. They want to help other people and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“I haven’t had one person ask me about the money yet.”