From The New York Times (gift article):
The Archdiocese of New York and plaintiffs’ lawyers reached an agreement on a proposed settlement in which the church would pay more than $800 million to settle claims from 1,300 people who said they had been sexually abused by its clergy members and lay leaders.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers said late Friday that they had finalized the settlement with the archdiocese and that all of the plaintiffs had signed off on it.
In an email to the priests of the archdiocese shared with The New York Times, Archbishop Ronald A. Hicks confirmed on Saturday that an agreement had been reached to settle the claims. He said the deal will not be final until the plaintiffs, lawyers and representatives for the archdiocese sign the settlement, which they are scheduled to do in early November.
“We are on the verge of being able to, please God, bring some measure of healing and reconciliation to all victim-survivors,” he said in the message, adding that the agreement “will also allow the archdiocese to turn its full attention once again to its mission of preaching the Gospel, healing the sick, caring for the poor and needy, welcoming the stranger, and educating our children.”
Terms of the settlement would call for each plaintiff to have the option of receiving a lump-sum payment of at least $250,000, or a potentially larger payout after a review of the extent of the abuse each plaintiff has claimed, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
The proposal would end a multiyear saga that threatened to bankrupt America’s foremost Roman Catholic archdiocese. The terms of the proposed settlement required that all 1,300 plaintiffs accept it, and there were some holdouts, who argued that the proposal did not do enough to rectify the harms they had experienced. Progress was also stymied by the deaths of some plaintiffs.
“Tonight, we were able to finalize the settlement with the Archdiocese,” Trusha Goffe, an attorney with Jeff Anderson & Associates, wrote Friday in an email to the firm’s nearly 300 clients who say they were abused. “All of the survivors agreed to the revised deal. This means that the settlement you agreed to will move forward.”
