June 11, 2003
Louisville Archdiocese to Pay $25 Million Abuse Settlement
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
he Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville announced yesterday that it would pay a settlement of $25.7 million to 243 people who say they were sexually abused by priests, religious brothers and employees of the Kentucky archdiocese.
The settlement is the largest ever paid directly from the assets of a diocese in the two decades since people began confronting the Catholic church in court over sexual abuse by priests, both the plaintiffs' lawyer and an archdiocesan official said. It was also one of the quickest, reached after only five days of negotiations.
For Louisville, a small archdiocese with 200,000 Catholics, the extent of the scandal and the financial impact have been of enormous proportions. In an archdiocese with 115 active diocesan priests, the plaintiffs accused 34 priests, 2 religious brothers and 3 laypeople of abuse from the 1940's to as recently as 1997, said Dr. Brian Reynolds, the chancellor and chief administrative officer of the archdiocese.
Louisville was also home to what may be the worst serial abuser among the priests who have been called to account anywhere in the nation. Ninety of the plaintiffs said they had been abused by the Rev. Louis Miller, a retired priest who was sentenced last month to 20 years in prison for child sexual abuse.
About three-quarters of the 243 plaintiffs said they had been molested by either Father Miller or three other priests.
"These past 14 months have been terribly difficult and painful for all of us, victims, priests and parishioners," Archbishop Thomas C. Kelly said in a late-night news conference in the church's chancery. "However, I believe that with this settlement we have begun to respond to the painful experiences that these men and women have experienced as children, and to seek forgiveness for the mistakes we have made."
Pressure on the archbishop mounted over the past few months as documents that surfaced through the legal discovery process revealed that he had failed to remove abusers from parish work and denounced a victim's family.
Victims in Louisville were unusually well organized, holding candlelight vigils and starting a petition drive calling for the archbishop to resign. Yesterday, the victims' support group Linkup was holding a prayer vigil outside the chancery offices when it received word that a settlement had been reached.
"The real crime is what the church did by moving them around," said Mike Turner, 45, who last April was the first plaintiff to file a suit against the archdiocese based on accusations of abuse by Father Miller, in a telephone interview last night. "If you can't punish someone by putting them in jail, the only way to punish them is to take money from them."
To pay for the settlement, the archdiocese will cut programs and services and may have to lay off more employees, Dr. Reynolds said. Last month the archdiocese, already feeling the financial impact of the legal battle, announced that it had laid off 34 employees and cut its budget by $2 million.
"The impact on the Catholic community over the past 14 months was significant, with people feeling the pain not only for the victims but for the innocent priests and the Catholics who were being exposed to the criticisms of their church," Dr. Reynolds said. "So there was a high degree of motivation to reach a settlement."
Insurance will not cover the settlement costs because most of the cases were so old, Dr. Reynolds said.
In two decades of sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic church, there have been other multimillion-dollar settlements but none that required a diocese to use so much of its own assets, said William McMurry, the lawyer for most of the 243 plaintiffs. He said the Archdiocese of Louisville disclosed during negotiations that it had $48 million in cash assets, so this settlement represents about half.
In a telephone interview last night, Mr. McMurry praised Archbishop Thomas C. Kelly for not resisting a settlement, as other bishops have done. "They could have dragged this case out for many many years, but they demonstrated compassion that has never been demonstrated before in these cases," Mr. McMurry said. "They felt it was more important to reach out to these victims and to give them their dignity back."
Both sides agreed to mediation and mutually agreed on a mediator, Nicholas H. Politan, a retired federal district court judge from Newark. The judge is responsible for deciding what percentage of the settlement will be paid to the plaintiffs' lawyer, and no figure has yet been set, Mr. McMurry said.
In Boston, which has about two million Roman Catholics, settlements over sexual abuse have totaled about $50 million so far. Boston's Cardinal Bernard F. Law resigned last December and apologized for his role in allowing abusive priests to remain in ministry.
Last night in Louisville, Archbishop Kelly said he had no plans to resign because he had listened to the wishes of the members of the archdiocess. "I believe that they've already spoken very clearly," he said.
Susan Archibald, president of the Linkup, the victims advocacy group based in Louisville, said in a telephone interview: "The situation per capita here has been about 10 times worse than Boston, and a lot of people have been asking why. My answer is that there's been a severe failure of leadership."