The Church’s Risky Ploy

By abandoning a settlement worked out with dozens of alleged victims of a convicted pedophile priest, Boston’s embattled Roman Catholic Cardinal Bernard Law and his finance advisors are in essence telling the victims, “So sue us.”

Perhaps archdiocesan pencil pushers--who rejected as too expensive the $15 million to $30 million that Law promised for the settlement of 86 claims of rape and molestation--believe they can get by more cheaply if each victim has to sue painfully and individually, or if they can renegotiate the settlement to include dozens of new reported victims. The Boston officials should study the decades-long, multibillion-dollar disaster of the asbestos industry’s liability lawsuits and quake in their churchly boots.

The Boston settlement would have established a mediation system to determine individual awards for alleged victims of convicted pedophile former priest John J. Geoghan, now suspected of abusing scores of boys over several decades. Law has admitted that he transferred Geoghan from parish to parish long after learning of the sexual abuse allegations.

The alleged victims and their families bought the promises of Law and diocesan lawyers who arranged the deal. Now that they see what those promises are worth, how likely are they, or new claimants who come forth in Boston, to take part in any other deal with the archdiocese? The fallout is sure to damage settlement attempts in other parts of the country as well. An early sign of the growing mistrust engendered by Law’s decision is a judge’s demand in Boston that Law appear for a deposition Wednesday in the Geoghan civil trial. Such a deposition by a Roman Catholic cardinal would be unprecedented.

Apart from the Geoghan case, there is a growing number of sex abuse claims involving Father Paul Shanley, arrested last week in San Diego on a Massachusetts warrant. Law had sent Shanley off to San Bernardino in 1990, calling him a priest “in good standing in Boston” despite the knowledge that he advocated “man-boy” sex.

If some of the alleged victims in the Geoghan case go to court, they will face the church’s formidable lawyers, who will surely try to avoid or limit payments by invoking charitable immunity or statutes of limitations. But the public-trust losses to the church will be immeasurable as every accusation is dragged into the courtroom. And juries, if the cases get that far, may make stratospheric awards.

Asbestos was used for decades as insulation in ships, schools and homes across the country. Many workers exposed to asbestos years ago, sometimes only briefly, developed severe and disabling injuries, including a fatal respiratory cancer. By the 1930s, scientists had linked asbestos exposure and disease.

In cases that began in the 1970s, the major producers of asbestos at first fought nearly all claims, denying that asbestos caused the plaintiffs’ conditions and then refusing to settle, insisting on trials. By 1982, the asbestos companies and their insurers were buried in lawsuits and were out an estimated $1 billion for victim compensation and litigation costs. Later attempts to strike a universal settlement with all past and likely future claimants have largely failed to stem the tide. Billions of dollars later, the lawsuits keep coming.

The sex abuse scandal could be even worse, because of the nature of the alleged crimes and the possible size of jury awards. Law and the Boston archdiocese have set out on a path that could endanger not only the reputation but the finances of the U.S. church itself.