NORTH CAROLINA
Citizen-Times
Written by
Romando Dixson
ASHEVILLE — The parents of a child sex abuse victim reached a settlement of more than $1.5 million with the Diocese of Charlotte to resolve a lawsuit alleging the Catholic Church’s pattern of hiring and protecting sexual predators allowed a former parish music minister to repeatedly molest their daughter.
The child will be awarded $1.2 million and the parents will receive $340,000 based on the settlement, the diocese’s official newspaper reported. The money will be divided between a direct payment and the purchase of an annuity that will benefit the victim.
The settlement closes the latest chapter surrounding a case that began in 2009 when Asheville police charged Paul Lawrence Berrell, a former music minister at St. Eugene Catholic Church, with taking indecent liberties with a child, then 13.
Berrell was sentenced in 2011 to 28 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to production of child pornography.
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