- Download PDF Version available for use with email and print distribution.
To: All Clergy, Parishes, Missions, Schools
From: Deacon Dennis Dorner, Chancellor
The Archdiocese of Atlanta was notified by our attorney on October 23, 2018 that the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has requested a preservation of documents in the nature of a litigation hold for all documents on a broad range of subjects relating to sexual conduct involving minors. This request was issued to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and all of its members, including all dioceses, archdioceses, eparchies, archeparchies, and personal ordinariates.
While it is unclear whether this Request has a legal basis to impact our Archdiocese directly, out of an abundance of caution we issued a litigation hold for all Chancery employees on October 23 and, after consultation with the Archdiocese’s attorney on December 19, have decided to expand this Request to all employees of the entire Archdiocese of Atlanta, including all clergy, parishes, missions, schools, etc. Please read the attached details for the specifics of the Request.
You should share this information with all employees and volunteers and instruct them to suspend ALL destruction of records and information for the foreseeable future to ensure our full cooperation with the spirit of the USCCB Sexual Conduct with Minors preservation request.
Until further notice there will be NO destruction of any drafts, copies, versions, or final documents, whether digital or paper. This also includes, but is not limited to, database information or reports, legacy systems, hard drives, USBs, any AOA issued devices, etc. No destruction means you are not allowed to throw out, shred, delete, or overwrite any information in any format.
Do not misfile, re-file, alter, delete, or erase any electronic data or perform other procedures, such as data-compression and disk-defragmentation or optimization routines that might affect such data on stand-alone personal computers or network workstations.
Specifically with respect to electronic data, you should notify whomever is responsible for the destruction, deletion, rotation, recording over, or erasure of any electronic files or media that all such electronic files or media must be preserved and not deleted or modified in any way. You should also safeguard any hardware, including CDs, DVDs, computers, external storage devices, optical storage media, removable drives, floppy disks, tapes, hard drives, servers, and similar equipment. Finally, you should also preserve any backup electronic media.
We understand that the above-described litigation hold procedures will be burdensome, but given society’s almost complete use of electronic data in the conduct of business today, these procedures are critical.
At this time, we are only required to collect or produce information, only to preserve information. Should you have any questions related to the litigation hold itself, please do not hesitate to contact the Office of the Chancellor at chancellor@archatl.com.
If you need assistance in managing your records or information for the duration of this preservation request, please contact the Office of Archives and Records at records@archatl.com or 404-920-7694.
Please be sure to distribute this information to all of your employees and volunteers.