The Diocese of Brooklyn wants to resolve the issue out of court to avoid “emotional distress for victim-survivors.”
</p><div><p>The Diocese of Brooklyn, which has already paid more than $100 million to victims, has announced it will take action <em>“global solution”</em> to settle the remaining 1,100 child sex abuse lawsuits against its Roman Catholic priests and staffers.
In a letter dated Thursday, Bishop of Brooklyn Robert Brennan wrote wrote that the diocese will begin “cost savings and setting aside significant funds to compensate victim-survivors.”
“The process of raising these funds involves difficult financial choices, but the diocese is committed to fairly compensating all deserving claims,” he said. He claimed that the victims’ lawyers agreed that an out-of-court settlement will save the day “time, costs and emotional distress for victim-survivors that would be caused by individual trials.”
The settlement is expected to deliver a huge financial hit, forcing the diocese to sell real estate to likely raise hundreds of millions of dollars, the New York Post reported Thursday.
The diocese has already paid more than $100 million to more than 500 sexual abuse survivors under its Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, which started in 2017. None of the payouts come from donations from parishioners, Brennan points out in his letter.
Brennan’s ecclesiastical district serves approximately 1.3 million Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. Most of the lawsuits facing the diocese date back to the 1960s and 1970s.
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In December, the neighboring Archdiocese of New York, which oversees the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island, agreed to pay out $300 million to compensate about 1,300 people who have accused its clergy and staff of sexual abuse.
