Last year, St. Louis Catholic priest Xiu Hui "Joseph" Jiang, who had been charged with abusing a boy, but then had charges dropped, filed a federal lawsuit against a number of defendants, including the boy's parents and the victim advocacy group SNAP. The suit charged SNAP with conspiracy, defamation and infliction of emotional distress. (See prior postings
1,
2). As reported by the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jiang has been attempting through discovery to obtain information on people who had made complaints against him to SNAP. The court ordered SNAP to produce that (and other) information, but it has refused. So Jiang moved for the imposition of sanctions under
Rule 37 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In
Jiang v. Porter, (ED MO, Aug. 22, 2016), a Missouri federal district court judge imposed unusual sanctions:
[T]he Court will direct that the facts alleged supporting elements of plaintiff’s claims against the SNAP defendants have been established for the purpose of this action....
[T]he Court will direct that it has been established that the SNAP defendants conspired with one another and others to obtain plaintiff’s conviction on sexual abuse charges and that they entered into this conspiracy due to discriminatory animus against plaintiff based on his religion, religious vocation, race and national origin.
