Spokane abuse settlement, Lawyers get $26 million payday!

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Lawyers to get half of money set out for Spokane abuse settlements
$48 million for victims cut down to about $22 million after attorney fees

Spokane, Feb 6, 2007 / 10:39 am (CNA).- About half of a proposed $48-million settlement would go to victims of clergy sexual abuse while lawyers are due to receive the other half, according to a settlement plan filed last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

The Diocese of Spokane’s 92-page disclosure statement in U.S. Bankruptcy Court said the Church’s bankruptcy lawyers are owed about $7 million, leaving $41 million to compensate victims. However, nearly half of the $41 million will be taken by lawyers of the victims.

The settlement money would come from nearly $20 million in insurance settlements, $18 million from the sale of the bishop’s office building and other assets; and $10 million from the diocese’s 82 parishes.

continued: catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=8564
 
Where is the public outcry when this kind of abuse takes place? Why don’t we demand accountability of these figures, many of whom have said vile things about the Catholic Church?

How many people won’t get help? That includes those in the lawsuits and those that have historically been helped by the diocese that will not recieve that now.

Attorneys who profit from a thing like this need to understand before they face thier Maker that keeping more money than what covers ones reasonable needs and security is a sin in it’s self. Hopefully they are donating back to causes that are moral, but it makes one wonder.

As Catholics we need to model this in our lives as well.
 
“According to the AP, Molly Harding, a leader of the Spokane chapter of SNAP, said victims are angry that so much of the settlement pool is going to pay lawyers. SNAP is a national activist group which speaks out against the Church over clergy abuse. The group has been promoting similar civil lawsuits against Catholic Dioceses around the country and continues to press state legislatures for laws which would facilitate a greater number of suits against the Church”.

What did SNAP except? You have a large lawsuit and yes you may get a big claim but in the end it drags on forever and the lawyer fees just keep racking up. And in the end those who need the help don’t get it.

Lets all continue to pray for the vicitims of abuse.
 
Lawyers and their “victims” ain’t gonna sleep tight at night. My pop always tells me don’t ever, ever take money from Christ’s Church. God will take it back in other way i.e. personal, financial problem, or dead without time to ask for forgiveness. I think my pop calls it as fairness or something.
bellesjoy said:
Where is the public outcry when this kind of abuse takes place? Why don’t we demand accountability of these figures, many of whom have said vile things about the Catholic Church?

How many people won’t get help? That includes those in the lawsuits and those that have historically been helped by the diocese that will not recieve that now.

Attorneys who profit from a thing like this need to understand before they face thier Maker that keeping more money than what covers ones reasonable needs and security is a sin in it’s self. Hopefully they are donating back to causes that are moral, but it makes one wonder.

As Catholics we need to model this in our lives as well.
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This reminds me of the story of Howard Hughes will. At the time of his death there were several purported wills extant and a lot of controversy.

Some claimed to have found the true will which stated:

Being of sound mind I am leaving it all to the lawyers; since they are going to get it anyway. 😃
 
I still fail to understand the link between abuse and the big bucks that are being shelled out. It’s like “winning the Catholic lottery.” I would be willing to bet that they’re not using that money for counselling, etc. They’re using it for their own purposes. It certainly is wrong that they were abused, etc., and those that did the abusing should be properly charged and convicted in a court of law. But I don’t see the school systems that allowed teachers to abuse students being sued for millions of dollars. Why not, if there is a real reason?
 
One of the saddest things I find in this is that more people are going to suffer. And not at the hand of abusive priests. It’s the poor, homeless and hungry living in Spokane. $10 million from the parishes??? My parents were born and raised in Spokane and much of my family still lives there. My grandparents live in one of the poorer sections of the city and still go to the same parish they attended when they moved in in 1952. I don’t know HOW that parish is going to survive. They have Sisters of Charity living there now and have an elementary school but their population is aging greatly and is very low income. I can only imagine how much the people of those neighborhoods are going to lose out on because people who were abused YEARS ago got greedy. I’ve heard from my mom too that most of the cases in Spokane were non-substantiated but were still settled. It’s sad to say but I don’t foresee my grandparents parish surviving another decade.
 
My diocese is next in line. There is a foundation that is under the diocesan umbrella. The foundation provides funding for care facilites for disabled abandoned children and other Catholic based agencies of the like. Their funds (over 10 million) are frozen and will be liquidated for use in the pending bankrupcy settlement. They had lots of very sad letters to write to their dependent agencies. Many agencies are going to cease because the foundation was their benefactor. One of the victims is still active in a parish in my diocese and has no bones about letting people know he was a victim who is sueing. I will say what happened to him has been made public and it was quite horrible and it occurred over several years. he was viciously abused.
 
If the mainstream media smearing of 2002 didn’t do the trick, these deep cutting lawsuits will force dioceses to adopt more thorough psychological screenings for seminarians, as well as direct supervision of parish priests while their with minors.

Needless to say zero tolerance has to be the name of the game from here on out…
 
My parents live in Eastern Washington in a small town within the archdiocese. They are upset because Spokane is one of the only archdiocese to give in to the huge settlement. Seattle handled it better because it didn’t affect the parishes. A lot of parishes have older populations or in their case one priest for three churches. There is no way they can pay for this settlement. The archdiocese did promise it wouldn’t sell the churches but is that possible now?
 
MollyF said:
My parents live in Eastern Washington in a small town within the archdiocese. They are upset because Spokane is one of the only archdiocese to give in to the huge settlement. Seattle handled it better because it didn’t affect the parishes. A lot of parishes have older populations or in their case one priest for three churches. There is no way they can pay for this settlement. The archdiocese did promise it wouldn’t sell the churches but is that possible now?
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As for the Spokane diocese having to sell churches I really can’t say, but I suppose anything is possible given what I know. Its a real shame and injustice to the average lay-Catholic in the pew. And I pray very few Catholics in eastern Washington take flight to other denominations over this, although I suppose its inevitable for some.

I would bet many priests in Washington are giving many heartfelt apologies to the faithful on behalf of the diocese and the Church, I also suspect Bishop Skylstad is delivering many very contrite letters to parishes by about now.
 
whilst on the subject I was wondering what happened ( if anything) to the people who tried to cover up the crimes of the paedophile priests by passing them off to other parishes. perhaps we should be directing our discomfort at these people not the lawyers as they caused this massive problem
 
God Bless them!!
Those lawyers not only had to find the truth from the rapist priests and from the lying bishops who hid them - they had to even fight those they represent. These suits should NEVER have been “settled”. They should all go to trial - so that the evidence and the statements can be made public record and the bishops responsible for this continued outrage can be exposed and removed. Until the victims get that, we’re ALL victims - and this will never end.

and the money? That kind of money ($100,000,000 - ONE HUNDRED MILLION in the Diocese of Orange settlement) would never be spent on the poor in our diocese (diocese of Orange - Bishop Tod Brown). He’s closed 3 elementary schools in the poorer sections of the diocese within the past 4 years because of lack of a TOTAL of about ONE million - but - he’s still building his $100,000,000 (one HUNDRED million dollar) cathedral, and buying million dollar homes for his favorite priests ocweekly.com/news/ex-cathedra/lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-pious/19586/ (Fr. Fred Bailey (alias “Barney Bailey” of the infamous Halloween Mass lives in house # 6 in Aliso Viejo ) See Fr. Fred at:- youtube.com/watch?v=khco_N-uEOY and
youtube.com/watch?v=fHi_VZLtcQ8

Fr. Fred Bailey lives in a 4 bedroom 3 bath, 2200 sq foot home, in a gated community. And there are no other priests in the parish, so, he’s got his privacy.

With a BRAND new Grand Hall built for the parish (Opened Nov 2006)- and a church building on the way - NO residences have been built on the church property, no daily masses on Mond, Wed, Thurs or Sat and no scheduled confessions (they’re by appointment only - for a wealthy parish of over 1600 people.)This priest deserves to be a pastor? and have a private home in a gated community? ON YOUR MONEY? Now, THAT’S a '9-5" job with GREAT benefits!!

Money? 10% of every nickel put into the basket on Sunday AT EVERY PARISH goes to Bishop Brown to support this lifestyle - NOT the poor, NOT the hungry, NOT the homeless - directly to B. Brown to do with has he pleases. And he “pleases” to close Catholic schools and build unnecessary, “monuments to his ego” cathedrals and buy (or continue to hold) big, expensive homes in gated (and guarded) neighborhoods for his favorite priests.

The man makes me ill.

God Bless the Lawyers!! They deserve every penny they can get out of the pockets of these corrupt bishops and the idiot parishioners who say things like, “Oh, but he’s so NICE!” and, by their consentual ignorance, allow this to continue. STOP THE MONEY AND THE SCANDAL WILL STOP; the payoffs to silence victims will stop; the bribing and buying of sexual favors will stop and the homosexual priests will leave. And the priests and bishops who are “in it for the lifestyle” will leave. God knows, B. Brown would be gone in a heartbeat.

Angel
 
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