FLAGSTAFF (AZ)
The Associated Press
September 22, 2018
By Felicia Fonseca
Four Native Americans who claimed they were sexually abused while enrolled in a now-defunct Mormon church foster program decades ago filed paperwork to dismiss their cases after reaching financial settlements, a lawyer said.
Allegations have been made against the church by more than a dozen tribal members from the Navajo Nation and Crow Tribe of Montana.
Four cases recently were settled, three were settled last year and others reached agreements out of court. One case remains in Washington state.
The terms of the latest agreements are confidential and include no admission of wrongdoing, said Craig Vernon, an attorney who represented the tribal members.
The cases were filed in Window Rock District Court on the Navajo Nation.
Vernon said he believed his clients would have prevailed in tribal courts, but federal courts were risky. He said his clients had mixed feelings about settling.
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