The Boston Archdiocese agrees to a record payout.
BOSTON (AP) – The Boston Archdiocese agreed Tuesday to pay $85 million to more than 500 people who claim Roman Catholic priests sexually abused them, giving victims a long-awaited formal recognition of their pain and the church a chance to move forward from one of the worst scandals in its history.
The settlement agreement is the largest known payout by a U.S. diocese to settle molestation charges.
Finalized after months of negotiations, the deal marks a major step toward quieting the crisis that has torn at the fabric of America’s fourth-largest archdiocese for nearly two years and spread throughout the country and beyond.
“No amount of money can restore the lost innocence, the shattered self-esteem or other effects of the abuse,” said David Clohessy, the national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “But for many victims, some kind of official, public acknowledgment that ‘We were harmed’ can be a real step toward healing.”
Under the terms of the agreement, victims would receive awards ranging from $80,000 to $300,000. The amount of awards given to victims will be decided by a mediator, based on the type of sexual abuse, the duration of the abuse, and the injury they suffered. Parents who filed lawsuits claiming loss of consortium with their children would receive a flat $20,000.
The $85 million deal came about a month after the archdiocese put a $55 million offer on the table. Many of the final details of the deal were hashed Sunday during a secret meeting attended by Archbishop Sean O’Malley – considered a steady but forceful voice in the negotiations.
O’Malley was in Washington on Tuesday attending a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“It’s a good day for the archdiocese,” said his spokesman, the Rev. Christopher Coyne. “We haven’t had too many over the last couple of years, but this is one.”
Coyne said the church is still looking for ways to finance the settlement. Possible revenue sources include selling off surplus property and suing the archdiocese’s insurance carriers.
“We have 37 days to come up with a plan on how to do this,” he said. “We will get this done.”
Roderick MacLeish Jr., a lawyer with the firm that represents nearly half of the alleged victims, said $85 million offer was accepted after considering the archdiocese’s struggling financial condition and the additional stress a trial would put on victims.
“There comes a point where they (the archdiocese) just financially can’t do anything anymore,” MacLeish said. “We could continue in litigation with the archdiocese for years and years and years, but would there be positive results?”
A resolution had been elusive since the scandal exploded in January 2002 with the release of court documents in the case of the Rev. John Geoghan, who was moved from parish to parish despite evidence he had molested children.
Allegations against dozens of other priests soon came to light, and hundreds of lawsuits were filed against the archdiocese.
Thousands of pages of priest personnel files, made public because of the Boston lawsuits, held sordid and shocking allegations: that a priest pulled boys out of religious classes and raped them in a confessional; that another fathered two children and left the children’s mother alone as she overdosed; that another seduced girls studying to become nuns by telling them he was “the second coming of Christ.”
The crisis put every U.S. diocese under new scrutiny.
In the year following the Geoghan case, at least 325 of America’s 46,000 priests were removed from duty or resigned because of molestation claims. And Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as Boston archbishop in December, giving up his post as spiritual leader to 2.1 million Catholics because of his mishandling of abuse cases.
Stephen Pope, a theology professor at Boston College, predicted it will take a generation before the church recovers from the scandal.
“The whole country has been waiting for Boston to resolve this question, waiting for Boston to set an example,” Pope said. “I think it sets precedent, not only legally but morally. We can say reasonable people would follow these procedures and follow this outline.”
The $85 million settlement is the largest ever by a U.S. diocese, although the amount of compensation per person may be smaller than what some individuals have received in other cases.
The most comparable deal came in June, when the Archdiocese of Louisville, Ky., agreed to pay $25.7 million to 243 people.
A jury awarded nearly $120 million to 11 victims of former Dallas priest Rudy Kos, but the victims agreed in 1998 to a reduced settlement of about $31 million. And a jury in California awarded $30 million to two brothers molested in the Diocese of Stockton, but that award was later cut to $13 million.
An investigation by the Massachusetts attorney general estimated that more than 1,000 children were likely victimized by more than 235 priests over six decades as church officials shifted priests from parish to parish, rather than removing them from ministry. However, no charges were filed against church leaders because child-protection laws in place at the time were too weak.
In September 2002, the Boston Archdiocese agreed to a $10 million settlement for 86 victims of Geoghan, who was ousted from the priesthood and sentenced to prison for child molestation. Geoghan, 68, was killed last month in prison, allegedly by another inmate.
O’Malley immediately began to push for a settlement after being installed as Boston’s archbishop on July 30. His first day on the job, he shook up the legal team that had represented the archdiocese throughout 18 months of stalled negotiations. A week later, he made a settlement offer of $55 million.
Over the next few weeks, O’Malley increased the offer to $65 million, while victims’ lawyers asked for between $90 million to $120 million. The gap was narrowed during lengthy negotiating sessions Sunday and Monday.
“This is the start of some process of healing,” MacLeish said, “and it would not have occurred without the extraordinary courage of these victims and the efforts of a compassionate archbishop.”
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Editor’s Note: Denise Lavoie is a Boston-based reporter covering the courts and legal issues.
AP-ES-09-09-03 2125EDT
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