4 Awarded $5.8 Million for Abuse

Three men and a woman repeatedly molested by a Roman Catholic priest as children were awarded $5.8 million in damages by a jury here Wednesday in the latest verdict handed down against the church in California.

A lawyer for one of the plaintiffs called the award the nation’s largest since 1998 in cases involving sexually abusive priests.

But the amounts awarded to the four former grammar school classmates were significantly less than they had asked for -- up to $14 million per plaintiff.

The case involving the late Father Joseph T. Pritchard is among more than 750 brought against Roman Catholic dioceses in California -- two-thirds of them against the Los Angeles Archdiocese -- under a 2003 state law briefly lifting the statute of limitations for sex abuse claims. It was the third to go to trial.

Last month, a jury awarded $437,000 to a man whom Pritchard had also abused. Last week, an Alameda County jury awarded more than $1.9 million to two brothers who were molested a quarter-century ago by another priest.

In Wednesday’s verdict, Ken Archambault was awarded $1,581,000; John Salberg received $1,580,200; and two other plaintiffs, who asked not to be named, received $1,470,000 and $1,322,900 respectively.

During the most recent Pritchard trial, attorneys for the four plaintiffs said their clients were molested by the priest from 1971 to 1979 in the rectory at St. Martin of Tours church in San Jose. The priest would point his finger at a child and demand that he or she sit on his lap, then would touch their genitals under their clothes, according to lawyers. Some plaintiffs were molested more than 700 times, often in the presence of one another.

“This man is the most prolific pedophile that I know of in the history of this litigation,” said Larry Driven, the attorney for Archambault. “He did more kids and more times than anybody I’ve ever heard of.”

In a statement released Wednesday, the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco assured that the church was taking steps to make sure such abuse does not occur again.

“While the incidents of abuse in these lawsuits date back more than two decades ago, this fact does not lessen our vigilance today, nor diminish our concern for victims of past abuse,” the statement said.

Lawyers on either side disagreed Wednesday on how the verdict and others issued in the last few weeks would influence the outcomes of the hundreds of other cases against other dioceses statewide.

Paul E. Gaspari, a lawyer for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, said the church did not dispute that the abuse had occurred. “This case was tried solely for the purpose of determining a reasonable amount of damages,” he said.

He added, however, that the verdicts were “far less than what we considered the unreasonable demands of the plaintiffs.”

He suggested that the lower verdict would work in the church’s favor in settling 230 abuse cases he is handling throughout Northern California.

“When you look at the totality of these verdicts they may and should form the basis of our ability to settle these cases in Northern California,” he said.

But attorney Laurence Drivon, who represented one of the four plaintiffs, countered that they received far more than the church had suggested to the jury.

Furthermore, the publicity each verdict garners can only be positive, he said.

“I can virtually guarantee you that there are children who will get to be born who will not be molested because of the impact of this case,” Drivon said. “It’s just a fact.”