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New York Catholic church to pay $27 million to four sex abuse victims

Wednesday, 19 September 2018 4:07 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 19 September 2018 4:16 PM ]

St. Patrick's Church in Brooklyn, New York.

A Catholic church in the US city of New York has reached a record $27.5 million settlement with four men who said they were sexually abused as children, attorneys said Tuesday.

The Diocese of Brooklyn, one of the city's boroughs, agreed to make the payments to the four, who were sexually abused between 2003 and 2009 by their religion teacher, their lawyers said.

The sum breaks down to $6.87 million for each of the victims, who were between the ages of eight and 12 at the time.

"This is the largest settlement ever involving individual victims," said attorney Ben Rubinowitz. "We are glad to see the church finally being brought to justice. It continued for months and in certain cases for years."

Church officials did not immediately comment. But the settlement ends the civil complaint of the four victims, which was to lead to a trial in early 2019, said Rubinowitz.

The complaint was filed in 2012. It came after religion teacher Angelo Serrano -- now 67 years old -- was arrested in 2009 for molesting a child, for which he pleaded guilty in 2011 and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

According to Rubinowitz, the diocese agreed to pay after trying to distance itself from Serrano, who was employed by the little parish of St Lucy-St Patrick, but not a priest.

A church priest, also targeted by the complaint, admitted to having seen Serrano one day kiss a child on the mouth, but never addressed the abuse, said another of the lawyers Peter Saghir.

"They decided that, rather than risk a trial, that it was time for them to make a payment."

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Pope Francis was set to host US bishops and cardinals on Thursday to discuss the Vatican's response to a new wave of devastating claims of sexual abuse by clergy.

According to the website BishopAccountability.org, the previous record for an individual compensation was $3.4 million and was paid to the two victims of Matthew Maiello of New York.

News of the settlement came as several US states, worried by a report in August detailing decades of sexual abuse involving more than 300 Catholic priests in Pennsylvania, are looking into historic abuse cases in their own jurisdictions.

The Church was also rocked by the resignation in July of US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, an influential ex-bishop of Washington.

He was accused of sexually abusing a teenager while working as a priest in New York in the early 1970s.

(Source: AFP)

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