Tom Doyle on Hypocrisy in Spades …

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William D. Lindsey

Tom Doyle on Hypocrisy in Spades in Milwaukee Settlement with Abuse Survivors

Today’s National Survivor Advocates Coalition News features an op-ed piece by Tom Doyle entitled “Milwaukee: Hypocrisy in Spades.” I’d provide a link for you to read it in its entirety, but don’t yet find it online. I highly recommend that you subscribe to NSAC News. You can do that by clicking here. If I find down the road that NSAC has published Tom Doyle’s essay online, as I think will happen, I’ll provide you with a link. (Later: MarkWilliam has kindly emailed to point out to me that the text is at We Are Church Ireland; If NSAC also publishes it, I’ll provide that link, too.)

Tom is commenting on the proposed settlement recently offered abuse survivors in the Milwaukee archdiocese. The settlement was presented in one media headline after another as a stunningly generous offer of church officials to settle with abuse victims and put the abuse crisis behind them.

But as Marie Rhode has pointed out, the settlement stunned survivors, since it actually excludes 240 survivors and their claims, and is, as Rhode quotes Milwaukee SNAP leader Peter Isely to say, “exponentially the lowest bankruptcy compensation for victims in the United States.” Here’s Tom Doyle’s summary of what the settlement means and offers, in effect:

A few weeks ago Francis LoCoco, Listecki’s lead lawyer, threatened to spend down the phony cemetery trust that Cardinal Dolan created to try to divert $56 million, by challenging the validity of every claim of the nearly 400 remaining survivor-claimants. The survivors had already been treated with more than enough cruelty brought on by the hard-ball legal tactics. Continued litigation would have resulted in more insult, pain and debasement. The archbishop and his lawyers forced them to accept a grossly unjust and unreasonable option in exchange for one that was even worse.

As he notes,

The main points need to be stressed to get greater clarity of the hypocrisy:
-At least 80 victims were secretly removed from the settlement without the creditor committee’s knowledge, among them appear to be the deaf victims of Fr. Murphy
-The five survivors on the committee were given nothing in writing about the settlement, were not allowed in the mediation to see any of the case reports of the victims they represented and were not told when the settlement was going to be announced
-The archdiocesan lawyers and Listecki decided unilaterally which claims were valid
-Among the 575 claims that came forth 100 involved newly alleged clergy perpetrators. The archbishop decided without any investigation that none were a danger to children.

This travesty brings even more discredit and disgrace to the already tarnished office of bishop. It is also an insulting and arrogant perversion of the federal bankruptcy process and it surely justifies every debasing pejorative joke about lawyers.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.