The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has reached a $500,000 settlement with a former janitor at a Maywood church who alleged that emotional distress caused the Long Beach woman to quit in 2019 after an associate pastor groped her in the rectory and tried to coerce her into his bed.
An attorney for the plaintiff signed the offer presented by the archdiocese attorneys on April 9, and the court papers notifying Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Christopher Lui of the accord were filed with him on Monday.
In July 2022, Lui granted judgment in favor of the archdiocese, affirming his ruling a month earlier dismissing the case brought by the woman who worked as a custodian at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church.
The parish is adjacent to a school as well as a rectory that housed the living areas and offices of Pastor Dario Miranda and Associate Pastor Primitivo Gonzalez, the suit stated.
The suit also named the church and school as defendants, and the judge found that neither they nor the archdiocese were liable for the alleged abuse of the plaintiff by Gonzalez.
“The alleged conduct by Father Primitivo Gonzalez is reprehensible,” Lui wrote. “However, there is no evidence that he had a history of committing other acts of sexual assault or that there was a risk he would sexually assault plaintiff.”
But in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Luis Lavin, a three-justice panel of the Second District Court of Appeal reversed Lui’s ruling in April 2024 and sent the case back to Lui for trial.
Lavin noted that the woman’s lawyers presented evidence from which a jury could find a “reasonable employee” who experienced such intolerable working conditions would be compelled to resign or stop working.
The plaintiff attended therapy sessions to address Gonzalez’s assault and the therapist eventually diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder and placed her on a leave of absence, Lavin further wrote.
“In sum, triable issues exist as to whether defendants through Father Gonzalez’s sexual assault knowingly permitted or intentionally created intolerable working conditions that led to (the plaintiff’s) workplace disabilities that preclude her from returning to work,” Lavin wrote, adding, “as defendants concede, Father Gonzalez’s sexual assault itself surely constitutes an intolerable incident.”
According to the suit, on the morning of July 30, 2019, the plaintiff was directed to clean the parish rectory, including Gonzalez’s private living space.
She was normally assigned to maintain only the school and church, but the employee who normally maintained the rectory was absent that day, the suit filed in December 2020 stated.
The plaintiff said she “stepped on my tiptoes so that I could be a little bit taller than him so that he couldn’t kiss me, but he grabbed my neck. He was breathing hard, and after that, he moved one of his hands away from the wall and he put my blouse down and my bra.”
The priest then said “Mamacita, I dreamed of you. Let’s go to bed,” according to the plaintiff.
The clergyman continued rubbing his body against hers, the plaintiff said.
“I couldn’t move,” she said “I couldn’t think at the moment.”
The plaintiff said she escaped from the bathroom, turned around and saw the priest following her and exposing himself.
The plaintiff suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and her psychiatrist concluded she is permanently unfit to resume employment within the archdiocese, according to her court papers.
Gonzalez admitted his wrongdoing, and the archdiocese reported the woman’s accusations to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, according to the defense attorneys’ court papers.
Gonzalez was kept out of the ministry, moved to Northern California to live with his brother in August 2019, and died in December 2020 at age 83 of complications related to dementia, according to the archdiocese attorneys’ court papers.
The archdiocese said in a previous statement that the plaintiff was not forced to resign and has received compensation and medical support through the archdiocese’s workers compensation program.