GEORGIA
Savannah Morning News
Editorial
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Savannah last week closed a painful and shameful chapter from its past when it announced it would pay $4.5 million to resolve a suit alleging child sexual abuse by a since-defrocked priest, Wayland Y. Brown. This was the second time the diocese agreed to settle a case involving Brown. The earlier one, resolved in 2009, settled for $4.24 million.
In the newer settlement, the plaintiff said he was a minor when Brown, whom he met at Savannah’s St. James Catholic Church and school, repeatedly molested him some 30 years ago. The sum, among the largest of settlements in individual cases of priest sex abuse, was reached after mediation. Its size indicates a willingness to end the litigation. It could also reflect vulnerability by the diocese which, under previous leadership, was accused of ordaining Brown despite reports of possible sexual abuse, of placing him where he had access to children and of not acting sooner on allegations against him.
Then-Bishop Raymond Lessard, who died earlier this year at his home in Boynton Beach, Fla., ordained Brown in 1977 and assigned him to St. James Parish. Lessard left the Savannah diocese in 1988 and was replaced by two subsequent bishops who to their credit, began showing responsibility and taking action against Brown, first to remove him from the active priesthood, and then to initiate de-frocking, which occurred in 2004.
By then more damage had been done, as Brown had pleaded guilty in 2002 in Maryland to child abuse and battery for abusing a teenage boy and his younger brother between 1974 and 1977, when Brown was preparing for the priesthood. Sentenced in 2002 to ten years in prison, he was released five years later.
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