MONTANA
Greenwich Time
By MATT VOLZ, Associated Press
Updated 12:02 pm, Thursday, June 26, 2014
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Attorneys for an order of nuns plan to ask a judge Thursday for a new round of negotiations to settle claims of child sex abuse by priests and nuns in Montana, a request that comes less than three weeks before the first trial.
The first three plaintiffs who say they were abused as children in western Montana are scheduled to go to trial July 14. Additional trials with similarly small groups of plaintiffs are planned but not yet scheduled against the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province.
The order of nuns and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena are defendants in two lawsuits filed in 2011 on behalf of 362 plaintiffs who say they were sexually abused in schools, churches and orphanages across western Montana between the 1940s and the 1970s.
The diocese filed for bankruptcy reorganization in federal court earlier this year as part of a $15 million proposed settlement with the plaintiffs. The Ursulines are not participating in the settlement.
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