According to Gustavo Arellano at the Orange County weekly, “For decades, the Catholic Diocese of Orange allowed child-raping priests to roam its parishes. For years, it covered up those crimes. For months, it stonewalled victims seeking justice”.
“Now the second-largest Catholic diocese west of the Mississippi is on the cusp of achieving victory in its notorious sex-abuse scandal”.
Arellano writes that “At press time, sources told the Weekly the Orange diocese will agree this week to pay somewhere between $90 million and $110 million to settle about 87 lawsuits alleging molestation at the hands of church employees”.
“If they’re right, it will be the largest diocesan sex-abuse settlement in Catholic Church history. The previous high was set last year by the Archdiocese of Boston, where a judge ordered then-Cardinal Bernard Law to dole out $85 million to 552 victims of pederast priests”.
Yet, despite the promise of these criminals being brought to justice, the one thing that many of the plaintiffs wanted out of this action will never be granted: the making public of the church personnel files on the priests involved. Arellano says this is because “Victims claim those files will prove church complicity in the molestations”.
Many plaintiffs wanted this outcome, particularly due to the fact that the bulk of the settlement funds are being provided by the Church insurer and will have no real impact on the diocese’s extensive holdings, rumoured to be around US$270 million.
Additionally, the church will not offer an in-person apology to the victims.
In Arellanos’ article, Father Mike Heher, in a confidential Nov. 30 letter to all Orange diocese priests, says that "We have kept our commitment to the victims of these crimes by remunerating them, with the help of our insurers, at a level that will be, in our view, significant, generous and compassionate".
“For us, it will be very, very costly. But such a settlement would allow us, chastened, to move forward as a diocese."
Yet, a courtroom observer is recorded as saying: "This settlement could’ve been obtained two years ago, when we started this whole process," countered a courtroom observer. "There has been absolutely no progress since then”
“They had sufficient money to fund the settlement then, but they waited and delayed and tried to wear the victims out. Everything else that victims sought was ignored. I’m sorry, [but] that’s not okay”.
“(Then church leader) Bishop Brown had a responsibility to treat [the molestation victims] as members of the faithful. Instead, they were treated like crap, like human garbage, and no amount of money can make that okay."
Arellanos’ article continues by stating that “Talks began in early 2003, when the Orange diocese agreed to closed-door negotiations with lawyers representing sex-abuse victims in order to avert the ignominy of public trials”.
“Church officials promised victims a "swift decision," but talks dragged on for 18 months and finally collapsed last June. By then, Bishop Brown had earned the enmity of Catholic America for planning to build a $100 million cathedral—all while telling sex-abuse victims there was no money to pay them”.
But on Nov. 29 and 30, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Owen Lee Kwong ordered all individuals with molestation cases pending against the Orange diocese to his Los Angeles courtroom, announcing that both sides were close to a settlement.
Lawyers for the victims weren’t surprised at the sudden development: they were already prepping to depose witnesses, including Bishop Brown, (former Orange County Bishop) Norman McFarland and Tom Fuentes, who served as the diocese’s communications director for 13 years.
"The truth is [the diocese] didn’t want anyone to find out what they did," says John Manly, a Costa Mesa-based attorney representing the majority of the sex-abuse survivors. "If the faithful in the pews knew the truth, they’d run the hierarchy out on a rail."
*All quotes from Gustavo Arellano are from this original article:Link
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