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  Diocese Bankruptcy Settles

By Kelli Steele
WGMD
February 3, 2011

http://www.wgmd.com/?p=16928

Wilmington, DE

Creditors are in agreement as follows -

1. A Trust for all survivor claimants will be Ordered by the Court, in which all survivor claimants will participate.

2. The Trust is initially funded by the DOW in the amount of $77,425,000 and all survivor claimants will receive awards from the Trust in about 30 days after final Court approvals of the DOW reorganization.

3. Later the Trust again will be funded by all judgments or settlements obtained against religious order defendants in the remaining 50 state court cases.

4. Survivor claimants then will receive later awards from the Trust, as it is again funded, in the same proportions which they initially received.

5. Retired Pennsylvania Judge Thomas Rutter of ADR Options will serve as the arbitrator who quickly will make individual awards to each survivor using an agreed upon set of factors set by the Official Committee.

6. The DOW has agreed to an unprecedented set of non-monetary obligations which open its secret archives, turn them over to the Committee, and institute procedures to see that child abuse does not reoccur.

7. The individual parish defendants of the DOW in the state court cases will receive appropriate dismissals or releases of the cases against them.

All this is subject to the approval of U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi who is presiding over the DOW chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding, and who has been notified of this agreement.

A press conference on this matter will be held at these offices at 2:00 p.m. TODAY February 3rd. Survivors will attend and will be available for questions.

But for now, attorney Thomas S. Neuberger, state court co-counsel for 99 state court survivors, along with the Jacobs & Crumplar law firm stated: “After a seven year fight we are on our way to fair compensation for survivors. This is an average payment of $530,000 for each survivor. So we now turn our guns to the three remaining religious orders, Oblates, Capucians and Norbertines, from whom we expect to obtain in total about $80 million since they have vastly more insurance coverage than the DOW, which only had less than $25 million in insurance coverage.”

“Due to our long court battle there has now been more public exposure of church child abuse, misdeeds and evil practices here in Delaware than in any other state. Due to the public release of secret church archives which the Official Committee demanded, these records now will permanently see the light of day,” Neuberger concluded.

 
 

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