The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $880m to 1,353 people who accused priests of abusing them as children in the largest payout by a United States diocese over decades-old claims that have rocked the church globally.
Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez expressed sorrow for the abuse while announcing the settlement on Wednesday.
“I am sorry for every one of these incidents, from the bottom of my heart”, Gomez said in a statement. “My hope is that this settlement will provide some measure of healing for what these men and women have suffered”.
The archdiocese began mediating the abuse claims following the enactment of a California law that permitted new lawsuits related to past cases of sexual abuse involving minors.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said that they suffered horrific abuse at the hands of Catholic priests and that they reached the settlement after months of negotiations with the archdiocese.
The agreement caps a quarter-century of litigation against the most populous archdiocese in the US.
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles had previously paid $740m to victims in various other settlements and pledged to better protect its church members, bringing the total payout with this settlement to more than $1.5bn.
The California law and similar laws in other states have driven many large Catholic organizations to seek bankruptcy protection. In California, the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the dioceses of Oakland and San Diego have filed for bankruptcy to resolve similar abuse claims.
The Los Angeles Archdiocese reached its settlement without filing for bankruptcy. Gomez said that the archdiocese would be able to pay victims from cash reserves, investments, loans and contributions from other religious organizations that had been named in lawsuits.
The payments will not impact the Archdiocese’s mission of “serving the poor and vulnerable in our communities”, he said.
Attorneys for the archdiocese and lawyers representing abuse claimants issued a joint statement on Wednesday thanking survivors for coming forward with their stories and for helping to ensure that similar abuse will not occur in the future.
“While there is no amount of money that can replace what was taken from these 1,353 brave individuals who have suffered in silence for decades, there is justice in accountability”, the lawyers said in a joint statement.
Widespread scale of abuse
The Catholic Church has been repeatedly shaken by child sexual abuse scandals worldwide over the last three decades.
In the US, the Boston Globe revealed in a 2002 investigation the shocking scale of sexual abuse on children in the Boston diocese and efforts by the Catholic hierarchy to cover it up. The paper’s investigation was the subject of the Oscar-winning film Spotlight.
In 2004, a church commission published a report requiring clergy to report suspicions of sexual assault.
According to lawyers, more than 11,000 complaints have been lodged in the US by victims of priests. Dioceses have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in out-of-court settlements.
Some victims associations say the payouts allow the church to escape justice. Several dioceses have since opened their archives, revealing that hundreds of priests had been suspected of abusing minors.
