GALLUP (NM)
Gallup Independent

Published in Gallup Independent, Gallup, NM, July 14, 2012

First in a two-part series

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent

GALLUP — Three Navajo men who filed the first clergy sex abuse lawsuits in the Navajo Nation court system have signed settlement agreements with Catholic Church officials.

“I just really had a courageous group of clients,” Patrick Noaker, the Minnesota attorney who represented the Navajo plaintiffs, said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Noaker, of Jeff Anderson & Associates, said all parties in the three different civil cases agreed to try mediation as an alternative to continuing litigation. Paul Bardacke, a former New Mexico attorney general, worked as the mediator throughout March and April, with all the settlement details being recently finalized, Noaker said.

Abuse allegations against Charles “Chuck” Cichanowicz, a former Franciscan priest who once worked on the Navajo Nation, were at the center of…