Church Agrees to Pay Off Victims
The Roman Catholic Church in San Diego has agreed to pay almost $200 million (198) “to settle 144 claims of sexual abuse by clergy.” This is not the first time that an American Roman Catholic Church agrees to pay off victims of abuse: earlier this year, the Church in LA agreed to “a record $660m deal to settle 508 abuse cases, some going back to the 1940s.”
On average, the San Diego victims will receive $1.4 million, which gives you a good idea of how many people were abused. Sick. No money can make up for the hurt caused to the individuals involved, but it might make life a bit more easy (at least no worries about finances anymore) and it might give the Church the push it needs to prevent the same from happening in the (near) future (on this scale) again.
4 Responses to “Church Agrees to Pay Off Victims”
But will people in Southern California stop giving to the church is they know that a huge amount of their money is going to used for attorney’s fees and legal settlements.
It is not like the Catholic church has a steady stream of income that can be used to settle such cases.
I could swear that this is not the first huge payoff of this sort the Church has given, and it keeps coming up again and again. You did qualify your statement a lot though, it’s possible that at least in the NEAR future, they’ll be more vigilant. But experience shows that this is not the last we’re going to see of widespread molestation and covering up.
Though certainly sexual abuse is not something that only happens in the Catholic Church (it’s not even the a major source of abuse) it’s interesting to note the fact that it is almost always the CATHOLIC Church that gets into these messes. I hardly think that it’s chance that it is precisely the Catholic Church that requires celibacy of clergy, while others allow their clergy to marry and have children. If you take a group of people and repress one of their most basic urges, it’s not all that strange that a certain number, those weaker in self-control and morality, will crack.
I haven’t followed this too closely, but the only reform I’ve heard about is the suggestion (by the Pope, I think) that gays be banned from the priesthood. Seeing that priests get in trouble with girls and women as well, I certainly hope more attention would be given to preventing cover-upts of all improprieties rather than on relying on the ‘gay’ issue to clean up the mess.
Lynx,
The problem with your logic is that the stats don’t back up your assertion. Pedophilia and sexual abuses are just as common among other churches as in the Catholic Church (which doesn’t excuse the Catholic hierarchy, because the centralized structure of our Church could have prevented the systemic cover up but did not).
And all of these sexual abuses are more about power than sexual urges, so it’s not about ‘repressing sexuality’ resulting in an aberration. It’s a lot like rape, really- not a true sexual act but an act of violence and control.
You’ve got the cause and effect backwards; the reason for a disproportionate amount of sex abuse among clergy (and other church leaders and even volunteers) is based on self selection bias. People with these pathological proclivities seek out these positions, and since they are very good at hiding their behavior it’s hard to weed them out.