NEW YORK (NY)
The Huffington Post
December 7, 2017
By Antonia Blumberg
[Note: See also a PDF of the Report on the Archdiocese of New York’s Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program]
The compensation payments were made to nearly 200 survivors.
The seat of the Roman Catholic Church in New York says it has paid roughly $40 million in compensation to victims of sexual abuse.
In a press release posted on the archdiocese’s website Thursday, media liaisons Joseph Zwilling and Mercedes Lopez Blanco said the payments were made to 189 abuse survivors.
The payments mark the end of a reconciliation program to evaluate claims by alleged abuse victims. In 2016, the New York Catholic Church launched its Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program to assess abuse claims by more than 200 people who said they’d been victimized by members of the archdiocese’s clergy.
The cases involved roughly 40 priests, The New York Times reported last year. Zwilling told HuffPost the archdiocese will not be releasing the names of the clergy members involved in the claims.
The program was headed up by Kenneth Feinberg, a lawyer who also mediated in the compensation fund for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. In administering the archdiocese’s reconciliation program, Feinberg and his colleague, Camille Biros, “were given total independence to evaluate claims and determine compensation,” the release said.
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