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Boston Archdiocese Pulls Out Of Settlement Deal On Abusive Priest
BOSTON, Massachusetts, May 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Scores of sex abuse plaintiffs, who were allegedly victimized by defrocked Roman Catholic priest John Geoghan, were mulling their legal options Saturday, after Boston's Archdiocese reneged on a multi-million dollar agreement to settle outstanding lawsuits, news agencies reported.
In a surprising and dramatic turnaround in the sex abuse scandal that has internationally embarrassed the Catholic Church, the archdiocese said Friday it was backing out of the $20 to $30-million agreement reached last March with 86 alleged victims of pedophilia, citing extreme financial hardship upon closer review of the settlement by its financial advisors.
"The proposed settlement would consume substantially all of the resources of the Archdiocese that can reasonably be made available and therefore, such an action would leave the Archdiocese unable to provide a just and proportional response to other victims," the Archdiocesan Finance Council said in a statement.
Under the now-scuttled settlement, independent mediators were to have assessed the harm to victims on a case-by-case basis, with as much as one million dollars to be paid to the most severely traumatized and as little as $25,000 dollars for victims who suffered what is categorized as “less severe harm”.
The committee concluded that the accord could financially bankrupt the Boston church, citing a growing number of sex abuse claims and noting that, "circumstances have changed dramatically since the process leading to the agreement began."
The Boston Herald newspaper reported that the Boston archdiocese has already shelled out some 1$5 million dollars to 40 alleged Geoghan victims since the mid-1990s.
The decision by church elders to scrap the settlement was the latest blow to embattled Cardinal Bernard Law, who has been under intense pressure from many members of his parish - as well as more subtle pressure from detractors in the Catholic church hierarchy -- to resign over his handling of the Geoghan scandal.
Now, rather than a legal settlement that would allow Law to begin rebuilding the support and trust of church members, he and other top Catholic Church officials face even greater scorn from disillusioned parishioners.
"Here I thought the church was making a step in the right direction, and instead they're taking 10 steps back," said Anthony Muzzi - who reportedly has accused Geoghan of abusing him when he was 12 years old - as quoted in Saturday's Boston Herald newspaper.
Mitchell Garabedian, lawyer for the Geoghan plaintiffs responded with even more rancor at the unraveling of the deal that had taken 10 months to hammer out.
"Cardinal Law is a despicable human being," Garabedian told the Herald.
"The man is a liar - no one can believe anything he says. My clients are in tears over this," he said, adding that he would immediately resume litigation in the Geoghan case.
The Boston Archdiocese claimed that Cardinal Law expressed regret in the Archdiocese statement Friday that the deal had fallen through.
"Cardinal Law expressed his deep regret at the vote, particularly in light of the fact that the Finance Council had previously been briefed on the proposed settlement and had expressed, at the time, a desire to see it go forward," the archdiocese statement claimed.
Church elders noted that the rejection of Law's request marks "the first time since Cardinal Law came to Boston in 1984 [that] the Finance Council did not grant the Canonically required consent."
Law now has been instructed to go back to the drawing board and to devise a plan to provide counseling for victims as well as "a non-litigious global assistance fund for all victims," according to the archdiocese statement.
"Such a fund is to be in an amount consistent with the resources that can be made available without crippling the ability of the archdiocese to fulfill its mission," the statement continued.
Geoghan, 66, recently sentenced to 10 years in jail for having sexually abused a 10-year-old boy in 1991, faces additional criminal trials and scores of civil lawsuits.
He was found guilty in January of indecent assault against the boy, while they were swimming in a public pool, but is believed to be guilty of dozens of other cases of pedophilia involving youthful parishioners.
His case set off the scandal now rocking the U.S. Roman Catholic church, whose prelates have taken heat for transferring several abusive priests, Geoghan among them, from parish to parish instead of handing the cases over to law enforcement officials.
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