Sexual Abuse by U.S. Catholic Clergy Settlements and Monetary Awards in Civil Suits This page provides a master list of the major settlements and monetary awards in the U.S. Catholic abuse crisis, which now total over $3 billion. We also present information on the settlement process, including the important nonmonetary provisions of many agreements, and provide sample documents. See below for: • Background and documents • Nonmonetary provisions • Largest settlements by total dollar amount • Largest individual settlements • What survivors received in settlements involving 25 or more cases • Master list of settlements and awards in chronological order

Background and Documents

Out-of-court settlements of civil suits are an important aspect of the Catholic clergy abuse situation in the United States, but they are by no means the only possible outcome of an abuse allegation. As you explore this page, we encourage you to keep in mind the larger context of the settlements. In the tables below, we document settlements involving 5,679 persons who allege sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. These survivors are only one-third of the 15,235 allegations that the bishops say they have received through 2009, and they are only 5% of the 100,000 U.S. victims that Fr. Andrew Greeley estimated in a 1993 study. Important as these settlements are, they represent a minority of known cases, and a tiny fraction of all the abuse perpetrated by Catholic clergy.

• Most survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy will never come forward to file a criminal or civil complaint. Two factors are especially important:
  • Statutes of limitations in most states do not take into account the time that must usually pass before victims of these crimes are able to come forward.
  • Many survivors were told by the cleric that they were the only victims. Dioceses have compounded this problem by dealing quietly with abuse allegations – failing to notify parishes and schools where abusers worked, obtaining confidentiality agreements, and using various "pastoral" approaches. Only 24 dioceses have so far released a list of accused clergy. As a result, many survivors must overcome loneliness and neglect if they are to come forward.
    
    
• Many thousands of survivors of clergy abuse have struggled with psychiatric problems and substance abuse, and hundreds have taken their own lives. The sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy has had massive economic consequences that far exceed the costs of civil claims – in lost earnings, increased requirements for healthcare and other services, financial effects on family members, and the cost of investigating crimes, trying the perpetrators, incarcerating them, and managing their paroles.
  
  
• Catholic priests who have been accused of sexual abuse number between 5,700 and 10,000, but because of restrictive statutes of limitations, only a few hundred have been tried, convicted, and sentenced for their crimes. The rest are never listed on a Meghan's Law list, and society bears the terrible cost of their continued access to children.

Nonmonetary Provisions

Survivors often cite the prevention of future abuse and the protection of vulnerable children as key motivations and goals. The survivors of clergy abuse are painfully aware of these issues because often they were abused by a priest who had abused previously and was then transferred to an unsuspecting parish. Often a survivor's struggle to come to terms with the abuse is made more difficult by the way that a diocese or a religious order handled abuse claims.

Many settlements include nonmonetary terms. Here is a small sample:

Sexual abuse litigation in the United States almost always ends in settlement. Until recently, the Catholic bishops dealt with the cases one-by-one and required confidentiality agreements as a condition of settlement. This strategy was apparently intended to keep victims from connecting with each other and to keep cases out of the media. The Kos trial in the late 1990s, with its large monetary award, confirmed the bishops in their fear of the courtroom. We know of 41 cases that have gone to trial since 1950 out of more than 3,000.

When the current phase of the crisis broke in 2002 and California opened a statute-of-limitations window for civil suits, the huge case load prompted judges to consolidate the cases. Dioceses that filed for bankruptcy also obtained consolidation on favorable terms. In the Orange diocese, the leverage of the consolidated plaintiffs was used to obtain diocesan documents as a condition of settlement, but that success has been difficult to repeat. The Los Angeles archdiocese settled with a promise to release documents, but no documents have yet been forthcoming. That is the situation in San Diego as well. A document provision in a settlement with the Franciscans in California has been contested. The Court of Appeals in California ordered on September 30, 2010, that the documents be released. A document release stipulated by the Portland OR settlement appears to be a partial release and has been criticized.

We will be adding smaller settlements to the following table. If you know of a settlement that we should include or have corrections to the list, please email us a citation or a link to a newspaper article. This table was last updated on 10/8/10.

Largest Settlements by Total Dollar Amount

Largest Per-Survivor Awards

What Individual Survivors Received in Settlements Involving 25 or More Cases

Master List of Settlements and Awards in Chronological Order

BishopAccountability.org has identified specific, mostly large settlements and awards totaling $2.49 billion, paid out by dioceses and religious orders and by their insurers to survivors of sexual abuse by clergy in the United States. These settlements are listed in the table below with links to sources. Note:

• The table includes few of the many smaller settlements under $1 million (less than 1% of the table)

• The table includes few pre-2002 settlements (less than 5% of the table)

Is it possible to estimate the total value of those other settlements?

As part of the John Jay College project, many bishops issued their own reports on abuse 1950-2002, including the settlement costs in those years. We have totaled the settlements in those local John Jay reports. The bishops count almost $750 million in settlements before 2002.

If we add the total of our big table and the bishops' pre-2002 number:

               $2,486,897,033
                +  749,600,189
               $3,236,497,222

we get over $3 billion. This very large number still leaves out the many small settlements done since 2002 but not yet included in our table, as well as any pre-2002 settlements that the bishops didn't include in their John Jay numbers.

Hence the total value of sexual abuse settlements in the United States is well over $3 billion. This $3 billion number far exceeds the dire prediction of Doyle, Peterson, and Mouton in 1985. And $3 billion is certainly an underestimate. Our table shows payouts to 5,048 survivors, only 33% of the 15,235 survivors who the bishops say have come forward.

Source: News articles and diocesan documents; see links. We use 40 percent for attorneys' fees and expenses, unless the sources provide a different number.