 Raising funds ... Cardinal Mahony has been forced to sell a diocesan building / AP |
THE Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles will settle its clergy abuse cases for at least $US600million ($690 million), which is by far the largest payout in the church`s sexual abuse scandal.
Lawyers for the archdiocese and the plaintiffs are expected to announce the deal tonight, the day the first of more than 500 clergy abuse cases was scheduled for jury selection, according to two people with knowledge of the agreement. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the settlement had not been made public.
The archdiocese and its insurers will pay between $US600million and $US650 million to about 500 plaintiffs - an average of $US1.2 million to $US1.3 million per person. The settlement also calls for the release of confidential priest personnel files after a review by a judge assigned to oversee the litigation, the sources said.
The settlements would push the total amount paid out by the Catholic Church in the US since 1950 to more than $2billion, with about a quarter of that amount coming from the Los Angeles archdiocese.
The settlement would be the largest ever by a Catholic archdiocese since the clergy sexual abuse scandal erupted in Boston in 2002. The largest payout so far has been by the diocese of Orange, California, in 2004, for $US100 million.
Facing a flood of abuse claims, five dioceses - Tucson, Arizona; Spokane, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Davenport, Iowa; and San Diego - sought bankruptcy protection.
It was not immediately clear how the payout would be split among the insurers, the archdiocese and several Catholic religious orders.
A judge must sign off on the agreement, and final details were being ironed out.
Lead plaintiffs` lawyer Ray Boucher confirmed the sides were working on a deal but would not discuss specifics. He said that negotiations would continue through the weekend and that there were still many unresolved aspects.
Tod Tamberg, archdiocese spokesman, declined to comment on any settlement details.
"The archdiocese will be in court Monday morning," he said.
Steven Sanchez, 47, was one of the plaintiffs set to go to trial today. He was expected to testify in the trial involving the late Reverend Clinton Hagenbach.
Mr Sanchez, a financial adviser, said the past few months had been especially difficult because he had to repeat his story of abuse for depositions with his lawyers and archdiocese lawyers in preparation for trial.
"We`re 48 hours away from starting the trial, and I`ve been spending a lot of time getting emotionally prepared to take them on, but I`m glad," he said. "It`s been a long five years."
The Los Angeles archdiocese, its insurers and various Catholic orders have paid more than $US114 million to settle 86 claims so far.
The largest of those came in December, when the archdiocese reached a $US60 million settlement with 45 people whose claims dated from before the mid-1950s and after 1987 -- periods when it had little or no sexual abuse insurance.
Several religious orders in California have also reached multi-million-dollar settlements in recent months, including the Jesuits, the Carmelites and the Franciscans.
However, more than 500 other lawsuits against the archdiocese had remained unresolved despite years of legal wrangling.
Most of the outstanding lawsuits were generated by a 2002 state law that revoked for one year the statute of limitations for reporting sexual abuse.
Cardinal Roger Mahony recently told parishioners in an open letter that the archdiocese was selling its high-rise administrative building and considering the sale of about 50 other non-essential church properties to raise funds for a settlement.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge overseeing the cases recently ruled that Cardinal Mahony could be called to testify in the second trial on the schedule, and lawyers for plaintiffs wanted to call him in many more.
The same judge also cleared the way for four people to seek punitive damages -- something that could have opened the church to tens of millions of dollars in payouts if the ruling had been expanded to other cases.
AP
