Clergy sex abuse victims have long accused the Archdiocese of Milwaukee of spending more money on lawyers to protect itself than to care for those who suffered at the hands of abusive priests. An Associated Press analysis of documents released this week found most of the $30 million the archdiocese paid out through mid-2012 went to victim settlements and therapy, but the bulk of it went to just a few victims — while hundreds of others got no money at all.
The archdiocese released the records as part of a deal with victims suing it for fraud in federal bankruptcy court. The documents cover 88 settlements worth at least $6.6 million and provide the first detailed look at which victims were paid, how much and when. Until this week, the archdiocese had only released annual totals.
The records support victims’ longtime claim that Wisconsin for many years was among the more difficult states for them to get compensation. The main reason was a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in 1995 that made it nearly impossible to hold the church responsible for its priests’ actions. The court said the church was protected from negligence lawsuits by the First Amendment. No longer afraid of litigation, the archdiocese established a no-settlement policy that lasted until the national clergy abuse scandal erupted in 2002.
“It was an appalling decision,” said Peter Isely, a longtime activist who now serves as the Midwest director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “Because (Milwaukee victims) were raped and sexually assaulted by a priest, unlike anywhere else in the country, they could not exercise their civil rights and file their case in court.”
It’s impossible to say for certain how much money clergy sex abuse victims have received from the Milwaukee archdiocese, because accounting before 2003 is questionable. Annual reports released by the archdiocese since then put the total cost of clergy sex abuse at $30.5 million as of June 30, 2012, with roughly $3 out of every $4 spent in the past decade going to victim settlements, therapy and other aid. An update for the fiscal year that just ended has not yet been compiled.
While victims question the archdiocese’s totals, they can’t come up with their own because the archdiocese’s accounts and most settlement records are not public. The 6,000 pages of documents released Monday represent only one-tenth of the papers the archdiocese turned over to victims’ attorneys during the bankruptcy case. The rest are still sealed, and Jeff Anderson, who represents 350 of the approximately 570 people with bankruptcy claims, said many more files weren’t turned over.
The files that have been made public, however, support victims’ claims that relatively few settlements were made before 1995, almost none were paid after the state Supreme Court ruling that year and, even once mediation began in 2003, the archdiocese gave victims little room to negotiate.
Eighteen of the 88 settlements included in the documents were reached before the 1995 state Supreme Court decision. The amounts range from $2,000 to $675,000, and it’s not clear from the records why some victims received more than others who suffered similar abuse. Hundreds of victims never received anything, Anderson said.
Most of the settlements made public were reached as part of a mediation program New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan started in 2003, when he was archbishop in Milwaukee. Victims typically received about $50,000 plus therapy costs, an amount Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for current Archbishop Jerome Listecki, said reflected a number of factors, including what victims elsewhere seemed to be getting and the archdiocese’s estimate of its ability to pay. Topczewski said hundreds of people received settlements and therapy through that program, although only about 60 were made public.
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