What you should know about the Los Angeles Catholic Church’s $880 million settlement with sexual abuse victims

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agReed will pay $880 million to hundreds of victims of clergy sexual abuse dating back decades.

The settlement, involving 1,353 people who claim they were abused by local Catholic priests, is the largest single child sexual abuse settlement with a Catholic archdiocese, experts say. Prosecutors were able to sue after California passed a law in 2020 that opened a three-year window for cases that exceeded the statute of limitations.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles previously paid $740 million to victims. With the agreement announced Wednesday, the total payout will be more than $1.5 billion.

To finalize the settlement, lawyers still need to obtain consent from all plaintiffs, the plaintiffs’ liaison committee said.

The agreement ends most sexual abuse lawsuits against the largest archdiocese in the United States, although some lawsuits against the church remain pending, victims’ lawyers say.

Here are some things you should know about the settlement:

It took a year and a half to reach an agreement

Negotiations began in 2022, lead plaintiff attorney Morgan Stewart said Thursday.

The attorneys wanted their clients to receive the maximum compensation possible while allowing the archdiocese to survive financially, Steward said. California is one of at least 15 states that have expanded the ability to sue institutions for long-standing abuses, leading to thousands of new cases that have forced several archdioceses to file for bankruptcy. including San Francisco and Oakland.

California law also allowed treble damages in cases where abuse resulted from a staff or volunteer’s “cover-up” of prior abuses.

“One of our goals was to avoid the bankruptcy process that has plagued so many other dioceses,” Stewart said.

The plaintiffs were abused 30, 40 or 50 years ago, Steward said.

“These survivors have suffered the consequences of abuse for decades.” Stewart told the Los Angeles Times. “Dozens of the survivors have died. They are aging, and many of those who know about the abuse within the church are aging too. It was time to solve this problem.”

The Los Angeles Catholic Church previously paid $740 million

The archdiocese has committed to better protecting its church members while paying hundreds of millions of dollars in various settlements.

Archbishop José H. Gomez apologized in a statement.

“I hope that this settlement provides some measure of healing for what these men and women have suffered,” the archbishop added. “I believe we have reached a resolution to these claims that provides fair compensation to the survivors and victims of these past abuses.”

Gomez said the new settlement will be paid by “reserves, investments and loans, and other assets of the archdiocese and payments made by religious orders and others named in the litigation.”

Hundreds of clergy in LA are accused of abusing minors

More than 300 priests who worked in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles are accused of sexually abusing minors over decades.

One of that priest was Michael Bakerwho was convicted of child abuse in 2007 and released on parole in 2011. In 2013, the archdiocese agreed to pay nearly $10 million to settle four cases involving abuse by the now-fired priest.

Confidential files show that Baker met with then-Archbishop Roger Mahony in 1986 and confessed to molesting two boys over a period of nearly seven years.

Mahony fired Baker from the rectory and sent him for psychological treatment, but the priest returned to the rectory and was allowed to be alone with the boys. The priest was only removed from office in 2000 after serving in nine parishes.

Authorities believe Baker abused more than 40 children during his time as a priest, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Church officials say they have made changes

The church now enforces strict background and reporting requirements for priests and has extensive training programs for staff and volunteers to protect young people, said Gomez, who succeeded Mahony after retiring as archbishop of Los Angeles in 2011. Mahony remains a cardinal.

“As a result of these reforms, new cases of sexual misconduct by priests and clergy involving minors are now rare in the archdiocese,” Gomez told the Los Angeles Times. “No one found to have harmed a minor is currently serving in parish ministry. And I promise: we will remain vigilant.”

As part of the new regulation, the archdiocese will disclose additional files it maintains that document abuse by priests.

“I’m not making any excuses, but the fact remains that the archdiocese is a very different place today than it was 40, 50, 60 years ago,” said Kirk Dillman, an attorney representing the archdiocese. “The understanding of abuse is much different and more sophisticated than it was back then. That’s why we have implemented zero-tolerance policy programs since the 1990s.”