In largest reported payout yet, Philadelphia Archdiocese settles abuse lawsuit

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

June 25, 2018

By Craig R. McCoy

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has settled a claim of sex abuse brought by the family of a 26-year-old former student in a Northeast Philadelphia parish who died of a heroin overdose in 2013 shortly before he was to testify in a criminal case against a local priest.

The suit was filed by the parents of Sean McIlmail, who had said that the now-defrocked priest, Robert L. Brennan, molested him for four years, starting when he was 11, while Brennan served at Resurrection of Our Lord parish.

While the payment amount is secret, the family’s lawyers say they understand it to be the largest yet paid by the archdiocese in an abuse case. It is only the sixth known sex-abuse settlement by the archdiocese — a remarkable fact given how extensive the priest abuse scandal proved to be here. The archdiocese has been the subject of two scathing grand jury reports that said its leaders had “enabled and excused” abuse by scores of priests for decades.

Elsewhere, some dioceses have faced myriad lawsuits with hundreds of millions of dollars in play. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, for instance, in a single agreement paid $660 million to 508 victims. The Philadelphia Archdiocese has been spared a greater financial burden largely because of Pennsylvania’s more narrow statute of limitations for such crimes, which has left victims without legal authority to sue. So far, the church and other critics have successfully lobbied in the legislature to block any major liberalization of those restrictions.

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