Boston Archdiocese sex abuse settlement rejected

By Belinda Yu

BOSTON (Reuters) – Lawyers for victims of sexual abuse by
priests rejected on Tuesday a settlement offer by the Roman
Catholic Archdiocese of Boston that they called “demeaning,”
“cruel,” and “immoral.”

The archdiocese has offered average payments of $75,000 per
person to settle claims from about 100 people who say they were
sexually abused during a pedophile priest scandal that surfaced
in Boston in 2002 and spread to other U.S. parishes.

“Every part of the proposal is unacceptable,” Carmen Durso,
a lawyer representing 33 plaintiffs, told a news conference.

In a 2003 settlement with 540 victims of sexual abuse, the
Boston archdiocese paid an average award of $153,000, or a
total of about $85 million.

The Archdiocese of Boston said last week that it hopes “to
compensate those survivors who have been abused by priests of
the archdiocese and to do so in a way that is just and
sensitive to the pastoral needs of the survivors.”

The lawyers said the deal was flawed because it excludes
victims of sexual molestation by priests ordained outside of
Boston. It was also not clear how many of a total 200
plaintiffs would be entitled to awards, the lawyers said.

“I don’t believe that these victims were any less molested
than the other victims,” said Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer
representing 55 plaintiffs. “This is supposed to be a moral
institution, not an accounting firm,” he added.

DECLINE IN DONATIONS

The abuse scandal prompted a decline in donations at
churches across the United States. Squeezed by the cost of past
payouts, the Boston diocese has closed more than 60 churches
and schools, triggering protests by parishioners.

The attorneys said the church’s proposal would split
pending cases into three tiers by merit.

A group of 100 Tier One plaintiffs would give an arbitrator
discretion to award payments of up to $200,000, with an average
payment of $75,000 per client.

Thirty Tier Two plaintiffs must go to court to decide
whether or not abuse had occurred. Seventy Tier Three
plaintiffs are excluded from any settlement.

One problem with this system, the lawyers said, is that the
church would unilaterally decide if individual cases have
merit. They added that the Archdiocese’s offer does not
guarantee payment to any client.

“There is no certainty to these offers,” Durso said. “None
of our clients have received an actual offer.” The lawyers plan
to make a counter-proposal in two to three weeks.

The scandal in Boston began when it became known that
former leaders of the archdiocese, including then Cardinal
Bernard Law, left known pedophiles in active ministry or
shuttled them from church to church without notifying
parishioners.

Law resigned in December 2002 after dozens of his own
priests publicly called on him to step down, but the effects of
the scandal still linger.