No matter the issue, it is wise to follow the trail of money to understand what is really happening. When the issue is legal reform to benefit childhood sexual abuse survivors, the trail has often ended at the insurance industry. Although the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has been the most publicly active entity to battle such reform to date, the insurance lobbyists have been the quieter and more deadly opposition. To date, they have worked in tandem.

Many will say, understandably, “Wait a minute, what the heck does the insurance industry have to do with child abuse?” One outraged blogger commenting on the Los Angeles Archdiocese's $660 million settlement with clergy abuse survivors in 2007 put it like this:

1. (1) The key words [in the news coverage], for me, are insurance and, then, sexual abuse insurance. The Catholic Church in LA has…sexual abuse insurance. Sexual abuse insurance.

2. (2) This is wrong on so many different levels…but after grappling with it, I came down to two things that really bake my noodle. The first is that you can buy sexual abuse insurance. The second is that someone actually bought sexual abuse insurance.

3. (3) This is just killing me. That there are companies – no, no, companies do nothing, there are people who said, “Oh, yeah, we're willing to give you liability coverage in case someone in your institution rapes children. We're comfortable making a profit off of helping your institution protect itself from punishments you'd get from systematic child abuse on a monstrous scale and your morally indefensible cover-ups of these crimes.” I mean, even beyond the legality of something like this, the simple morality of it…This boggles my mind.

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