In what could be the closing chapter in a landmark legal battle, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $880 million to victims of clergy sexual abuse dating back decades in the largest settlement involving the Catholic Church.
Attorneys for 1,353 people who allege that they suffered horrific abuse at the hands of local Catholic priests reached the settlement after months of negotiations with the archdiocese. The agreement caps a quarter-century of litigation against the most populous archdiocese in the United States.
The settlement leaves only a few lawsuits pending against the church in Los Angeles, attorneys for the victims say.
The archdiocese had previously paid $740 million to victims in various settlements and had pledged to better protect its church members, so this settlement would put the total payout at more than $1.5 billion.
“These survivors have suffered for decades in the aftermath of the abuse. Dozens of the survivors have died. They are aging, and many of those with knowledge of the abuse within the church are too. It was time to get this resolved,” said attorney Morgan Stewart, who led the settlement negotiations.
Attorney Mike Reck of Jeff Anderson & Associates said, “This is a measure of justice. There can never be full justice. These brave survivors brought it to protect kids in the future.”
Archbishop José H. Gomez approved the settlement, which will be funded by archdiocese investments, accumulated reserves, bank financing, and other assets. According to the archdiocese, certain religious orders and others named in the litigation will also cover some of the cost of the settlement.
“I am sorry for every one of these incidents, from the bottom of my heart,” Gomez said in an announcement to parishioners. “My hope is that this settlement will provide some measure of healing for what these men and women have suffered.”
He said it provides “just compensation to the survivor-victims of these past abuses while also allowing the Archdiocese to continue to carry out our ministries.”
The archdiocese enforces strict background and reporting requirements, Gomez said, and it has established extensive training programs for staff and volunteers to protect young people. “Today, as a result of these reforms, new cases of sexual misconduct by priests and clergy involving minors are rare in the Archdiocese,” he said. “No one who has been found to have harmed a minor is serving in ministry at this time. And I promise: We will remain vigilant.”
Still, victims have continued to come forward with decades-old claims.
For more than two decades the church has been roiled by allegations that onetime leaders mishandled abuse cases, sometimes moving clergy known to have sexually abused minors to other parishes rather than removing them from the priesthood and informing law enforcement.
In legal documents, diocesan and police records over the last few decades, more than 300 priests who worked in the archdiocese in Los Angeles have been accused of sexually abusing minors.
Gomez succeeded longtime Cardinal Roger Mahony, whose handling of the scandal drew fierce criticism and undercut his moral authority as one of America’s most prominent Roman Catholic leaders. In 2013, documents were released that showed Mahony and a top advisor plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement.
“Cardinal Mahony is the center of a lot of these allegations,” Stewart said. “His years of covering up allow more children to suffer.”
As part of the new settlement, Stewart said, the archdiocese will disclose more of the files it kept that documented abuse by priests.
Among the clergymen cited in the lawsuits that were settled Wednesday, Father Michael Baker is one of the priests with the most victims. He confessed to abusing boys to Mahony in 1986, but was allowed to return to the ministry after receiving therapy. However, authorities say, he went on to molest more children.
Authorities believe that Baker molested more than 40 children during his years as a priest.
In 2009, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles launched a federal grand jury investigation into Mahony and the church’s handling of abuse allegations. The investigation did not result in any criminal charges.
But during decades of civil litigation, it was revealed that the archdiocese went to extreme lengths to ensure that abuse was not reported to the police. Memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese’s chief advisor on sex abuse cases, revealed in church leaders’ own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.
After Baker admitted his abuse of young boys, Curry wrote in a memo, “I see a difficulty here, in that if he were to mention his problem with child abuse it would put the therapist in the position of having to report him. He “cannot mention his past problem,” Curry added. Mahony’s response to the memo was handwritten across the bottom of the page: “Sounds good — please proceed!!”
Two decades would pass before authorities gathered enough information to charge Baker with abuse. Baker pleaded guilty in criminal court to sexually abusing two boys in 2007 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was released in 2011 because of credit for time served in county jail and good behavior.
It was the Baker case that largely led to Mahony’s downfall.
Baker told The Times in 2001 that he had informed Mahony of his sexual attraction to children in 1986.
“I told Mahony I had a problem,” he said. Mahony did not ask for specifics and appeared willing to let him remain in the priesthood, Baker said. “He was very solicitous and understanding. I was glad I brought it up.”
George Neville Rucker was another priest who faced abuse allegations and was the subject of several cases settled Wednesday, Stewart said. Lawyers allege he had at least 41 victims from the late 1940s to the 1980s and was accused of raping girls as young as 7 years old.
Rucker was forced to retire as a priest in 1987. He remained a chaplain until 2002, when he was charged with 29 counts of molesting girls; fearing he would try to flee prosecution, authorities plucked him off a cruise ship bound for Russia. The charges were dropped in 2003 after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling determined some cases, including Rucker’s, were beyond the statute of limitations.
In 1991, Rucker met with a victim in Seattle and attributed the sexual abuse he’d committed to a steroid medication he was taking and to God, a meeting attendee wrote in a letter to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The attendee’s name is redacted in the letter.
“Well, God called me into the priesthood and God doesn’t make mistakes, so I assume all of this happened as part of God’s plan for [the victim’s] salvation,” Rucker told the person.
“It’s the first time I ever heard someone lay responsibility for their sexual abuse of someone at God’s doorstep!” the person wrote in the letter, adding that that they were concerned because it’s rare to “see a sex offender with only one victim.”
In 2014, the Los Angeles Archdiocese settled what it believed would be the last of its pending priest molestation lawsuits and imposed a series of reforms. However, a change in state law in 2019 that gave adults more time to file lawsuits over childhood sexual abuse resulted in a new wave of litigation against the archdiocese.
The settlements have been financially crushing for Catholic dioceses across the country. To finance them, they’ve sold vast swaths of church property and in some cases exhausted or relinquished insurance coverage for past and future abuse claims.
More than two dozen Catholic dioceses, including those in San Diego, Oakland and San Francisco, have filed for bankruptcy in recent years.
In 2019, the L.A. Archdiocese announced a record $8-million settlement with an 18-year-old former Catholic school student who was molested by a coach. It was the largest individual settlement by the archdiocese in a sex abuse case. Her attorney said concerns about the teacher’s conduct were ignored.
