Opinion ID: 2180233
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Personal Privacy Interests

Text: [¶ 15] The personal privacy interests protected by the privacy exception are twofold. First, an individual has an interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters, Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 762, 109 S.Ct. 1468; second, an individual has an interest in controlling the dissemination of personal information. Fed. Labor Relations Auth., 510 U.S. at 500, 114 S.Ct. 1006. Intelligence and investigative information is an exception to FOAA's general policy requiring disclosure because such information often involves sensitive personal information that may or may not have been verified by public officials. Few people wish to be publicly associated with investigations of alleged criminal conduct, whether as a perpetrator, witness, or victim. See Mack v. Dep't of the Navy, 259 F.Supp.2d 99, 106 (D.D.C.2003) (recognizing that individuals have a strong privacy interest in avoiding unwarranted association with alleged criminal activity). People who are identified in criminal investigation reports have a substantial interest in keeping their identities closed to the public, regardless of how they are characterized in the record. See SafeCard Servs., Inc. v. SEC, 926 F.2d 1197, 1205 (D.C.Cir.1991); Fitzgibbon v. CIA, 911 F.2d 755, 767 (D.C.Cir.1990). For these reasons, the United States Supreme Court has recognized that when the subject of a law enforcement record is a private individual, the privacy interest protected by the privacy exception is at its apex. Favish, 541 U.S. at 166, 124 S.Ct. 1570; Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 780, 109 S.Ct. 1468. [¶ 16] The Superior Court concluded that the privacy rights of the alleged victims, witnesses, and priests have been dissipated or extinguished by (1) the information's prior public disclosure; (2) the manner in which the information came into the possession of the Attorney General; and (3) the death of the priests who are the subjects of the allegations.
[¶ 17] Three of the fourteen files submitted for in camera inspection by the court reference the prior public disclosure of certain allegations contained in the files. [7] The remaining files contain no indication of prior public disclosure, apart from the report of the allegations directly to the Diocese, a District Attorney, or the Attorney General by individuals professing knowledge of the alleged abuse. [¶ 18] The prior public disclosure of information does not generally extinguish privacy interests in the nondisclosure of the same information organized and contained in the investigative records of a law enforcement agency. See Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 770, 109 S.Ct. 1468. A person's interest in controlling the dissemination of information about oneself is an integral part of the right to privacy. Mack, 259 F.Supp.2d at 109. In Reporters Committee, the United States Supreme Court rejected the notion that a personal privacy interest does not attach to an individual's interest in keeping private a criminal rap sheet containing information that was already available to the public from other sources. 489 U.S. at 762-71, 109 S.Ct. 1468. [T]he fact that an event is not wholly private does not mean that an individual has no interest in limiting disclosure or dissemination of the information. Id. at 770, 109 S.Ct. 1468 (quotation marks omitted). [¶ 19] Here, the prior disclosure of allegations contained in two of the fourteen files detailing allegations of sexual abuse by the deceased priests does not extinguish the interests of the various individuals named in the records in controlling the separate dissemination of the information as it is organized and portrayed in the Attorney General's investigative records.
[¶ 20] The Attorney General came into possession of the information concerning the deceased priests from three sources: (1) reports made by the Diocese based on information it received from current or former church members; (2) reports made by a county prosecuting attorney based on information she received from members of the public; and (3) reports the Attorney General received directly from members of the public. As the Superior Court observed, none of the reports were made under the protection of the confessional: [T]o the extent that the alleged victims or others working on their behalf have stepped forward and lodged their complaints, their expectation of continued privacy would be diminished to the extent that the investigation being sought would require disclosure. [¶ 21] The privacy interests reposed in the records are diminished to the extent the information was voluntarily reported to church and public authorities with the expectation that it would be used to investigate possible wrongdoing. Moreover, the Attorney General does not claim that any of the individuals who reported the information to authorities did so under circumstances where there was an express or implied understanding that their identity or the identity of others named in the records would remain confidential. See Keys v. United States Dep't of Justice, 830 F.2d 337, 345 (D.C.Cir.1987). Accordingly, the manner in which the information was reported dissipated the privacy interests. [8]
[¶ 22] The Superior Court did not determine whether the deceased priests should be deemed to have a residual privacy interest in the records because of the clear affirmative answer it reached regarding the public interest in disclosure of the records. Before us, Blethen asserts that the privacy interests of the deceased priests named in the Attorney General's records and their immediate family members terminated with the priests' deaths. [¶ 23] We have not previously considered whether the privacy interests protected by section 614(1)(C) continue after a person's death. The two federal circuit courts of appeals that have considered this issue in connection with the FOIA have reached different conclusions. Compare Campbell v. United States Dep't of Justice, 164 F.3d 20, 33 (D.C.Cir.1998) (concluding that deceased persons have reputational interests and family-related privacy expectations [that] survive death), with McDonnell v. United States, 4 F.3d 1227, 1261 (3d Cir.1993) (holding that deceased persons have no privacy interest subject to invasion by disclosure). More recently, the United States Supreme Court recognized in Favish that the relatives of a deceased person may invoke their own interest in personal privacy in connection with the FOIA's personal privacy exception: [W]e think it proper to conclude from Congress' use of the term `personal privacy' that it intended to permit family members to assert their own privacy rights against public intrusions long deemed impermissible under the common law and in our cultural traditions. 541 U.S. at 167, 124 S.Ct. 1570. [9] [¶ 24] Our in camera inspection of the records reveals that the passage of time has substantially dissipated or extinguished the privacy interests of the deceased priests, if any, and of their relatives. The length of time from both the alleged misconduct by the priests and their deaths is measured in decades, not years. The median number of years since the priests' deaths is twenty-five, and the average number of years since the acts of alleged abuse exceeds forty. The earliest acts of abuse are alleged to have occurred in the 1930s, and the most recent acts of abuse are alleged to have occurred not later than 1983. [¶ 25] The disclosure of allegations that might damage a deceased person's reputation and adversely affect the peace of mind of his or her family in the years immediately following death will have considerably less effect many years later. As measured by the passage of time from both the deaths of the priests and the alleged acts of abuse, any residual privacy interests of the deceased priests and their immediate family members in this case are, at most, minimal. Accordingly, we need not separately determine whether the deceased priests have privacy interests within the ambit of section 614(1)(C) that survive their deaths.
[¶ 26] The privacy interests of the living individuals named in the Attorney General's records are substantial based on the sensitive nature of the events described in the records. Although these interests were not diminished by the prior public disclosure of some of the allegations, the manner in which the information was reported to church and public officials diminished any expectation of continued privacy in the information. In addition, the passage of time has largely extinguished the residual privacy interests of the deceased priests, if any, and of their immediate family members.