The St. Louis Archdiocese has paid $467,500 in the past year to
nine people who claimed they were sexually abused by six St.
Louis-area priests as long ago as the mid-1960s, officials
said.
A lawyer for the archdiocese said it has paid $8.2 million to
settle 103 sexual abuse claims. About three-quarters of the cash
has been paid to accusers who came forward in the past seven years,
a period in which abuse by priests - and the Catholic Church's
handling of accusations - rose to a local and national scandal.
The archdiocese confirmed the settlement figures on Monday after
a survivors group held a news conference to name five of the
priests in the settlements: Robert F. Johnston, James A. Funke,
Joseph Lessard, Donald Straub and Michael S. McGrath.
The archdiocese later acknowledged a mediated settlement
concerning a sixth priest last year, but did not identify him.
There are about 10 complaints still pending resolution, said
Bernard Huger, a lawyer for the archdiocese.
The archdiocese also agreed to post the Missouri child-abuse hot
line in every archdiocesan workplace; educate adult employees on
how to recognize sexual abuse; conduct "safe touch" programs for
children and immediately report abuse complaints to
authorities.
Huger said the first three "concessions" have been in effect for
years, and the fourth is mandated by law. Ken Chackes, a lawyer for
some of the plaintiffs, said it was important to get the
archdiocese to commit to keeping them going.
Seven members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by
Priests demonstrated outside the Richmond Heights home of McGrath,
decrying that none of the five priests are listed in Missouri's
sex-offender database. They distributed pamphlets to neighbors that
began, "Your neighbor is a predator!"
McGrath's mother, Stella, answered the door for a reporter and
said her son was not home.
She said his accusers were making up
stories "trying to get money from the archdiocese."
About the leafleting outside, she said, "I don't think there is
anything I can do about it."
McGrath did not respond to a phone message.
McGrath has been sued by 20 people alleging abuse. He was
ordained in 1975, removed from public ministry in 1997 and laicized
in 2005. He served in parishes and schools in St. Louis, St. Louis
County and St. Charles County.
Funke, a former teacher at Bishop DuBourg High School in St.
Louis, pleaded guilty in 1987 to molesting two teenage students and
was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was removed from the
priesthood in 2006.
Straub was ordained in 1975 but removed from ministry by St.
Louis Archbishop Cardinal John Carberry. He was laicized in 2005.
Church officials have apologized to victims and said Straub
admitted allegations of sexual abuse and had been treated before
being returned to service.
Johnston, defrocked in 2002, was charged with sodomy in
Jefferson County in 2006 for sexually abusing a boy in 1978; the
disposition of the criminal case was not clear on Monday.
Lessard admitted to the Post-Dispatch in 2002 that he molested
at least 12 boys in three parishes in the 1960s and '70s, but had
been returned to service by Carberry after treatment.
In a
statement, then-Archbishop Justin Rigali said reassigning Lessard
to new parishes was "inadequate and, by current standards,
unacceptable."
He was never charged with a crime.