Face to Face with Brad Hall: Fighting for victims of clergy sex abuse

Albuquerque Journal ^ | Saturday, July 13, 2019 | Kent Walz

[Jyotishi]

Attorney Brad Hall, in the firm's conference room with iPhone photos he has taken. (Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)

Editor's note: Albuquerque attorney Brad Hall has represented more than 200 victims of priest sex abuse in New Mexico. As his years-long legal battle nears its conclusion in federal bankruptcy proceedings, Hall talked about the legal and emotional journey that began with an unlikely visit.

Brad Hall was thinking about hanging it up after more than two decades as a successful plaintiff's lawyer specializing in civil rights cases. Maybe travel. Visit his kids living in exotic locations. Maybe do some writing.

That all changed in 2011 when a former basketball teammate from a county league team in the 1980s walked into his office.

"I hadn't seen him in 20 years. But in the next three or four hours he told me how as an altar boy he had been sexually assaulted by Fr. George Weisenborn at Saint Francis Xavier in Albuquerque."

Just telling the story was a gut-wrenching experience for his former teammate.

"Afterward, I watched him go out the door and head towards his car," Hall said. "He fell to his hands and knees on the sidewalk and vomited."

It turned out to be Hall's first case of many representing victims of sexual assault by Roman Catholic priests and clergy in New Mexico. His thoughts of retirement and travel were pushed to the background.

The Archdiocese in Providence, Rhode Island, had sent Weisenborn to the Servants of the Paraclete treatment center in Jemez Springs in 1964.

"He (Weisenborn) kept getting arrested in Washington, D.C., for picking up boys in back alleys for 10-15 bucks and having sexual acts performed on him," Hall said.

Watching his former teammate throw up on the sidewalk also made Hall appreciate the trauma involved when someone finally