Archdioceses in New Orleans, New York to compensate survivors of abuse
At 4 years old, Linda Lee Stonebreaker was molested by a priest from her church in a New Orleans suburb. Decades later, Stonebreaker, the daughter of the late New Orleans Saints football player Steve Stonebreaker, addressed her abuser on social media.
“My late father — may he haunt you in your sleep,” she wrote.
Last week, Stonebreaker and hundreds of other survivors learned they will be compensated for the abuse. In separate announcements, the Archdiocese of New Orleans and the Archdiocese of New York said they will create multimillion-dollar trusts to pay out decades-old claims of molestation by clergymen.
The monetary settlements reflect a national pattern of how the Catholic Church and some of its largest archdioceses are dealing with countless claims from survivors, many of whom were sexually abused as children. Both show how the church continues to be held accountable for failing to prevent extreme harm to some of its most vulnerable members.
New Orleans
In a scandal that drove the Archdiocese of New Orleans to bankruptcy, 600 people, including Stonebreaker, came forward with claims that they were abused by clergymen.
On Dec. 8, a federal judge in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana approved a landmark settlement, closing a high-profile chapter in a bankruptcy battle that began in 2020.
As the Times-Picayune of New Orleans reported, the settlement marks “an end to one of the darkest chapters in the 232-year history of the local Roman Catholic Church.”
Originally, the New Orleans Archdiocese’s insurer, Travelers, had balked at paying its part of a proposed $230 settlement. But on the morning of Dec. 8, the company agreed to add $75 million to the settlement, increasing the total to be paid to survivors to $305 million.
Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill approved the settlement trust, funded by multiple sources, including Travelers. The trust will provide compensation to affected individuals based on a points basis.
The settlement also requires the archdiocese — the nation’s second oldest — to include a sexual abuse survivor on its internal review board, as well as a child protection monitor.
Neither attorneys for the survivors nor the archdiocese responded to requests for comment from Straight Arrow News.
New York
As the New Orleans settlement came to a head last week, the Archdiocese of New York announced it would create a $300 million trust — compiled in part by selling off assets and cutting costs — to compensate roughly 1,300 people who claimed they, too, were sexually abused as minors by priests and staff members.
“There is no agreement at all — what we do have is a proposal for a process by which you go into a mediation,” attorney Jeff Anderson, who represents 300 people with claims against the church, told The New York Times. “This is the first time the archdiocese has shown willingness to engage in any kind of process to bring all of this toward resolution.”
The archdiocese also agreed to a mediated discussion with the survivors.
“As we have repeatedly acknowledged, the sexual abuse of minors long ago has brought shame upon our church,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan said in an email to about 300,000 New York Catholics. “I once again ask forgiveness for the failing of those who betrayed the trust placed in them by failing to provide for the safety of our young people.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
