Los Angeles Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Payouts To Top $1.5B With Latest Settlement

To resolve more than 1,350 child sexual abuse claims being pursued over incidents that date back to the 1940s, the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese recently announced that it will payout another $880 million in settlements.

When added to the $740 million in prior Catholic Church sexual abuse payouts previously made by the Archdiocese in recent years to resolve similar allegations, this latest settlement will bring the L.A. Archdiocese settlements to more than $1.5 billion.

Archbishop José H. Gomez issued a letter to parishioners on October 16, announcing the settlement agreement. The letter ties the settlement to California’s passage of a law in 2019, which gave adults who were abused as minors a three-year window to file civil claims without concerns over statute of limitation laws.

Gomez states that following the enactment of the law, about 1,900 claims involving past sexual misconduct by members of the Church were filed, naming the Archdiocese as a defendant. These settlement payouts are expected to resolve the vast majority of those claims.

“I am sorry for every one of these incidents, from the bottom of my heart. My hope is that this settlement will provide some measure of healing for what these men and women have suffered,” Gomez wrote. “Most of the alleged acts of abuse covered in this settlement took place more than fifty years ago, with a number of the cases dating back to the 1940s. Some of these acts are alleged to have been committed by Archdiocesan clergy, some by lay people, and some by religious order priests and clergy from other dioceses who were serving here.”

The letter indicates that the Archdiocese has put numerous reforms in place to deal with past issues of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Gomez wrote that no one who has been found to have harmed a minor is currently serving in the Archdiocese, and such reports have become rare.

He also indicated the Catholic Church sexual abuse payouts will be made using funds provided by insurers, investments and other streams of income, and will not come from donations by parishioners.

California was one of the first states to pass a law setting aside statute of limitation laws for instances of child sex abuse civil claims. New York, New Jersey and numerous other states have passed similar laws, allowing “windows” for the filing of claims over instances that happened decades prior.

Some states have gone even further, with Maryland’s Child Victims Act eliminating the statute of limitations on such cases completely. This has resulted in an influx of Maryland child sexual abuse lawsuits against the Catholic Church and numerous other entities over the past year.  However, the Supreme Court of Maryland is currently weighing the law’s constitutionality, following a challenge filed by the Mormon Church.

In the wake of many of these new laws, several Catholic Archdiocese have declared bankruptcy, indicating that the extent of liability they face for child sexual abuse claims exceeds available assets. However, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was able to make payouts to resolve claims involving their organization without bankruptcy protections.