New York Catholic Church agrees to mediation for 1,300 sexual abuse claims
The Roman Catholic Church in New York and more than 1,300 accusers on Monday announced they have agreed to mediation to settle sexual abuse claims that could result in one of the largest payouts ever by the church in the United States.
With civil litigation against the Archdiocese of New York due to come to trial next year, the archdiocese agreed to negotiate settlements over the next two months, said attorney Jeff Anderson, who represents some 300 of the 1,311 accusers whose claims date from 1952 to 2020.
In announcing the negotiations, the Archdiocese of New York acknowledged a "darkness" in its past and said it hoped to achieve a global settlement that would provide victim-survivors with "the most financial compensation possible." The archdiocese said it has laid off staff, cut costs and put real estate assets up for sale in hopes of raising $300 million for victims.
A payout of $300 million would rank as one of the largest ever by a U.S. archdiocese. Anderson said the total payout could surpass the record $880 million paid to a similar number of accusers by the Los Angeles archdiocese in 2024. That settlement was mediated by retired Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Daniel Buckley, who will also mediate the New York case.
The church said its effort to compensate victims was "complicated" by its ongoing legal struggles with Chubb Insurance Companies, which it said has refused to pay sexual misconduct claims for policies that the church had taken out for decades before 2000.
Chubb in turn accused the archdiocese of tolerating and covering up child sexual abuse for decades and called for more transparency, saying the archdiocese has refused to share "what they knew and when."
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government...025-12-09/
The Roman Catholic Church in New York and more than 1,300 accusers on Monday announced they have agreed to mediation to settle sexual abuse claims that could result in one of the largest payouts ever by the church in the United States.
With civil litigation against the Archdiocese of New York due to come to trial next year, the archdiocese agreed to negotiate settlements over the next two months, said attorney Jeff Anderson, who represents some 300 of the 1,311 accusers whose claims date from 1952 to 2020.
In announcing the negotiations, the Archdiocese of New York acknowledged a "darkness" in its past and said it hoped to achieve a global settlement that would provide victim-survivors with "the most financial compensation possible." The archdiocese said it has laid off staff, cut costs and put real estate assets up for sale in hopes of raising $300 million for victims.
A payout of $300 million would rank as one of the largest ever by a U.S. archdiocese. Anderson said the total payout could surpass the record $880 million paid to a similar number of accusers by the Los Angeles archdiocese in 2024. That settlement was mediated by retired Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Daniel Buckley, who will also mediate the New York case.
The church said its effort to compensate victims was "complicated" by its ongoing legal struggles with Chubb Insurance Companies, which it said has refused to pay sexual misconduct claims for policies that the church had taken out for decades before 2000.
Chubb in turn accused the archdiocese of tolerating and covering up child sexual abuse for decades and called for more transparency, saying the archdiocese has refused to share "what they knew and when."
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government...025-12-09/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
