Pope Francis. The New York Catholic church was reported on September 18,
2018, to have reached a record settlement of $27.5 million over child
sex abuse. PHOTO | VINCENZO PINTO | AFP
NEW YORK,
The
Catholic church in New York has reached a record $27.5 million
settlement with four men who
said they were sexually abused as children,
attorneys said Tuesday.
The Diocese
of Brooklyn, one of the city's boroughs, agreed to make the payments to
the four, who were sexually abused between 2003 and 2009 by their
religion teacher, their lawyers said.
JUSTICE
The sum breaks down to $6.87 million for each of the victims, who were between the ages of eight and 12 at the time.
"This is the largest settlement ever involving individual victims," said attorney Ben Rubinowitz.
"We are glad to see the church finally being brought to justice. It continued for months and in certain cases for years."
Church
officials did not immediately comment. But the settlement ends the
civil complaint of the four victims, which was to lead to a trial in
early 2019, said Rubinowitz.
The
complaint was filed in 2012. It came after religion teacher Angelo
Serrano -- now 67 years old -- was arrested in 2009 for molesting a
child, for which he pleaded guilty in 2011 and was sentenced to fifteen
years in prison.
PAYMENT
According
to Rubinowitz, the diocese agreed to pay after trying to distance
itself from Serrano, who was employed by the little parish of St Lucy-St
Patrick, but not a priest.
A church
priest, also targeted by the complaint, admitted to having seen Serrano
one day kiss a child on the mouth, but never addressed the abuse, said
another of the lawyers Peter Saghir.
"They decided that, rather than risk a trial, that it was time for them to make a payment."
According
to the website BishopAccountability.org, the previous record for an
individual compensation was $3.4 million and was paid to the two victims
of Matthew Maiello of New York.
News
of the settlement came as several US states, worried by a report in
August detailing decades of sexual abuse involving more than 300
Catholic priests in Pennsylvania, are looking into historic abuse cases
in their own jurisdictions.
The Church was also rocked by the resignation in July of US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, an influential ex-bishop of Washington.
He was accused of sexually abusing a teenager while working as a priest in New York in the early 1970s.
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