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A Long Wait Brings $20 Million to Catholic Church Sex Abuse Victims in Montana
It took six long years for victims of child sexual abuse in Montana Catholic churches to reach a $20 million dollar settlement agreement. The potential agreement is between victims and the diocese in Great Falls-Billings. The allegations brought forth occurred at ministries between 1940 and the 1980s. Churches throughout the eastern part of Montana were listed in the accusations.
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Bishop Michael Warfel has stated he believes the church is doing the right thing in paying the settlements, but hopes the Catholic church can continue its original mission and that the settlement will help those who were abused to heal. The bishop also stated that in general it was likely that neither party was happy with the outcome, but the archdiocese of Great Falls-Billings couldn’t possibly pay any more.
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Just last year the diocese had filed bankruptcy under Chapter 11 in an effort to negotiate with the survivors. Then, in March of this year the diocese said they wanted to dismiss the bankruptcy because neither side could agree and the mounting legal costs were quickly draining the church’s resources. Warfel stated that he felt an obligation to be fair to the victims while doing what he could to keep parishes active.
Who Gets What?
In cases such as these where there are multiple victims there is typically someone who independently determines what each victim gets monetarily, based on several factors. This is usually done by an independent adjudicator. Some of these factors include severity of the abuse and how long the abuse went on for. Part of the settlement will go to the lawyers representing the victims.
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Lawyers for the victims stated that awareness of the crimes and accountability are often more important to the victims than any monetary payout. In recent years, many dioceses have had to list names of the abusers on their websites to show transparency as well as to take accountability, as will the Great Falls-Billings diocese. Doing this also gives prior victims who haven’t come forth the knowledge that they probably weren’t the only victim a certain priest or clergy member abused.
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Warfel also stated that the diocese will be proactive in stopping the abuse by training clergy, although he didn’t state what type of training that would be or what it would entail. There have been numerous other cases of settlements in the U.S., although this one represents the 15th of such bankruptcy cases in the U.S. by the Catholic church.
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