IOWA
Telegraph-Herald
BY MARY NEVANS-PEDERSON TH STAFF WRITER MNPEDERSON@WCINET.COM
UPDATED
Another 26 claims of clergy sexual abuse against priests with the Archdiocese of Dubuque have been settled for cases from the late 1940s through the 1970s.
The archdiocese paid a total of $5.2 million to the abuse survivors: 22 men and four women, according to attorney Chad A. Swanson of the Waterloo, Iowa, firm Dutton, Braun, Staack & Hellman. The firm has resolved 83 clergy sexual abuse claims against the archdiocese since 2006.
The priests named in the latest group of claims served in schools, hospitals, colleges, convents and parishes big and small. A group representing clergy sex abuse victims said there are likely many more victims who have not reported their abuse.
“This is, we suspect, fewer than half of all such victims,” said Steve Theisen, director of the Iowa chapter ofSurvivors Network of those Abused by Priests, in a press release. “We urge Iowa’s bishops to ‘come clean’ and disclose all the settlements — those in which victims were represented by lawyers and those in which victims were not represented.”
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