HARRISBURG (PA)
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
February 11, 2019
By Liz Navratil and Angela Couloumbis
The Roman Catholic dioceses in New Jersey, some reeling from their own clergy abuse scandals, announced plans on Monday to establish a unified victims-compensation fund aimed at providing money to some people who were abused by clergy members as children.
“This is the first time we’re doing a statewide program using the same protocol and the same eligibility criteria,” said Camille Biros, who will administer the program and currently oversees similar ones in New York and Pennsylvania. “This is important news, and we’re looking forward to working with all the dioceses in the state.”
Details of the plan are still being finalized, and it likely won’t include all victims. As has been the case elsewhere, people determined to have been abused by religious order priests, rather than those who report directly to the diocese, are likely to be excluded.
People who accept money from the compensation fund will be required to sign a release saying that they will not sue the diocese. The agreements would not include a confidentiality clause for victims, Biros said.
“Administrators of this program are bound by confidentiality,” she said, later adding: “But the claimant can speak to whomever they want. … They can talk about the money; they can talk about the process.”
Such compensation funds have typically proven controversial. Some clergy abuse victims welcome the news of such funds, viewing them as a path toward justice since they are barred from filing lawsuits by civil statutes of limitations.
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