$55 mn offered to church sex abuse victims

New York, Aug 09: In an effort to put the embarrassing allegations of child sex abuse by its priests and efforts at cover up at the higher level behind it, the Boston archdiocese has offered to $55 million to settle an estimated 542 claims, lawyers dealing the cases said on Sunday.
The victims had 30 days to accept the offer and a five-member steering committee of attorneys representing the plaintiff would meet next week to review the offer, lawyers said.

But it was yet unclear whether the offer would be accepted by alleged victims, many of whom have said they are not after money but want the church to acknowledge the wrongdoings. Details were still being worked out and archdiocese declined to discuss the offer.
Lawyer Mitchell Garabedian said that he was going to review the offer with his 120 clients but was uncertain whether it would be accepted.
"We don`t make any comment about the substance of negotiations," said the Rev Chris Coyne, a spokesman for the archdiocese. "There was a mediation meeting on Friday. It went well, but we`ve agreed not to talk about it."
This is not the first settlement offer. Under Cardinal Bernard Law, the diocese offered $30 million to a smaller number of plaintiffs, and then backed out of the agreement when the archdiocese`s finance council rejected the terms.

The church then made a $10-million settlement offer in September 2002, which 86 of Garabedian`s clients accepted.

Since then the scandal has forced Law to step down. Archbishop Sean O`Malley was installed as head the diocese on July 30 and this was apparently an attempt by him to put the issue behind and move on, analysts said.

The alleged victims said that priests sexually abused boys and girls and the church leaders failed to take cognizance of the complaints. The maximum punishment handed out to them was transfer to another location where they abused other children, they alleged. The state attorney general estimated that there could be as many as 1,000 cases of abuse over last four decades. Bureau Report