When Cardinal Roger Mahony announced a settlement July 15 with people who were suing the Los Angeles Archdiocese for sexual abuse by clergy, some called the occasion “historic.”Part of that designation results from the numbers involved in the case: 508 plaintiffs; more than 150 priests accused of abuse; and $660 million in settlement (approximately $1.3 million per victim), the largest such payout in U.S. church history.
Of that money, $240 million will go to lawyers’ fees. Late last year, the archdiocese, the largest diocese in the United States, settled 86 other cases for $114 million.
Adding to the sense of epic was the four-year battle between lawyers, during which the archdiocese fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court against plaintiffs’ attempts to pry open priest personnel files.
Others, however, see it as just one more settlement in the ongoing scandal of sexual abuse and its cover-up in the church.
“While it’s obviously a huge amount and involves an important archdiocese, it is by no means the end of the story,” said Leon Panetta, a member of the original National Review Board, the lay panel U.S. bishops established in 2002 to monitor their child protection reforms.
“I look at it as just another tragic chapter in what has been a very shameful moment in the church. I think it is just that. It’s another chapter,” Panetta said.
In fact, the Los Angeles chapter isn’t quite closed. The archdiocese has to raise the money to pay the claimants.
The archdiocese is to pay $250 million of the settlement, insurers $227 million, and religious orders $60 million. Mahony said July 15 that the remaining $123 million would come from “other sources,” including religious orders “not yet participating” in the settlement.
In May, the archdiocese announced it would sell its chancery building and up to 50 other properties to help fund settlements. At the time, Mahony said no parishes or parish schools would be closed, “nor will their essential ministries be affected by these sales.”
He repeated that pledge July 15.
As part of the settlement, the archdiocese agreed to release the personnel files of accused clergymen to a retired judge, who will decide whether and how to make them public.
Plaintiffs and their lawyers say they don’t know when they will see those files, because each priest involved can challenge the release of his records.
Given the archdiocese’s history with the documents, the plaintiffs say they expect the archdiocese to continue to fight full disclosure for fear these documents could reveal links between Mahony and abusive priests.
In 2003, California passed a law opening a one-year legal “window” during which victims of child sexual abuse could bring suit even if the statute of limitations on their cases had run out. This allowed hundreds of cases to proceed.
Marci A. Hamilton, a law professor at Yeshiva University in New York and author of the forthcoming book How to Deliver Us From Evil: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children, called the California legislature “heroic” for enacting the “window law.”
Hamilton believes the archdiocese never would have felt the pressure to settle the claims against it without the window.
In Wisconsin last month, the state Supreme Court revived a lawsuit against the Milwaukee Archdiocese brought by victims of child sexual abuse that had been stalled by statute of limitation laws. The case involves Father Siegfried Widera, who had been transferred between California and Wisconsin.
Hamilton said that because of litigation in California, facts about Widera became known in Wisconsin. In the face of those facts, Hamilton said, no court could deny victims a day in court.
“California simply opened the door to the truth coming out and that made a difference in Wisconsin,” she said.
Just a couple days before the settlement was announced in Los Angeles, a similar window law went into effect in Delaware, and the first window lawsuit against a Delaware Catholic priest has already been filed.
Window laws and proposals to extend the time allowed for filing cases involving child sexual abuse are being considered in New York and Pennsylvania. Such laws were proposed last year in Colorado and Ohio, but were not enacted.
Catholic bishops in those states played key roles in stopping the bills, which Hamilton said she couldn’t understand.
“The public position of the hierarchy,” she said, “is that they want to get this behind them, but they will never get it behind them until the truth comes out. So to the extent that they try to block this kind of legislation, they are prolonging not only the agony of the victims but prolonging the need in society to find some way to get to the truth.”
Panetta said that the settlement of big cases like the Los Angeles archdiocese’s “create a mentality of ‘well, it’s now all over so we don’t have to worry about it.’”
The challenge of the current leadership of the Catholic church is “not pretending like this is over,” Panetta said.
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