San Diego settles: $198 million.
September 7, 2007, 3:56 pm
Posted by Grant Gallicho
Reuters reports:
The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego has settled lawsuits with
144 victims of sexual abuse by priests for $198 million, the diocese
and lawyers for the victims said on Friday.
The settlement was twice as much as the diocese offered five months
ago to resolve allegations that priests and church workers molested
scores of young men and women 20 or more years ago.
From the diocesan website:
http://www.diocese-sdiego.org/Reorganization_Updates/Pastoral%20Stmt%20Settlement%20H.pdf
http://www.diocese-sdiego.org/Reorganization_Updates/Overview%20Settlement%20Statement.pdf
From the diocesan report:
“Since this effort failed, we have
accepted a plan for the compensation of victims, even though the total settlement amount actually takes us beyond available resources and will result in some damaging consequences for the mission of the Church in this diocese for a number of years.”
The point is made too often that the settlements will affect services. When dioceses become transparent with finances financial support will increase where people truly see the need. Today with grossly expensive Cathedrals in LA and Oakland, as well as other places, a terrible message is sent.
Christian people always support worthy causes. The difference is it has to be shown nowadays that the cause is worthy.
I thought I would offer a brief personal reflection.
San Diego is my home diocese. I have some scattered connections with Msgr. William Kraft, one of the accused. I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of his abuses, but his assignment record and the multiple accusations against him make it fairly obvious that he was incredibly guilty of child sexual abuse.
He was my first pastor, and the founding pastor of the parish in which I spent my childhood. He was reassigned when I was 3 or 4, after he built the school where I was educated, the church where I received the Sacraments of Initiation, and the rectory where I worked afternoons through high school.
Our paths crossed years later at another parish where he was saying Mass sometimes. He was the celebrant, I played guitar. Then the rumors started, and became very strong. Next thing I knew he was retired. A decade later, he died.
I have these weak connections and impressions of this life, so strangely lived, that apparently devastated many with a thoroughly horrible combination of high clericalism and child sexual expoitation.
At the settlement, I feel somewhat relieved. It’s a lot of money but probably not impossible to raise and there is some sense of closure. I wonder how everyone is doing back home and I have some phone calls to make. But the people I know are not the people most affected, and that’s why I’m not totally relieved. I wonder how the settlement will affect the victims. My thoughts about a man I barely knew are unsettled: I try to imagine the thoughts of children whom he traumatized. Will they receive closure? The bishop apologized, which is something that victims have said again and again that they need. Will it help? Will the money help? Will legal vindication (of a kind) help?
I hope so. In many ways this man was instrumental in providing for the structures of my childhood. He and others brutally robbed other children of their innocence, and restitution for that deep destruction cannot easily be repaid. I pray that everything that has been stolen can somehow be restored, and that the victims may find peace and healing.
The point that settlements will affect services is made too often? That has to be a joke. You won’t see newspaper stories making that point.