What you need to know about the Los Angeles Catholic Church’s $880 million settlement with sex abuse victims

LOS ANGELES – The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $880 million to hundreds of victims of decades-old clergy sex abuse.

The settlement with 1,353 people who allege they were abused by local Catholic priests is the largest child abuse settlement with a Catholic archdiocese, according to experts. The plaintiffs were able to file a lawsuit after California passed a law in 2020 that opened a three-year window for cases that exceeded the statute of limitations.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles previously paid $740 million to the victims. The settlement announced Wednesday will bring the total payout to more than $1.5 billion.

Attorneys must still get approval for the settlement from all plaintiffs to finalize it, the Plaintiffs Liaison Committee said.

The agreement ends most sexual abuse lawsuits against the largest archdiocese in the United States, although some lawsuits against the church are still pending, attorneys for the victims say.

Here are some things to know about the settlement:

It took a year and a half before an agreement was reached

Negotiations began in 2022, lead prosecutor Morgan Stewart said Thursday.

Attorneys wanted their clients to get the largest possible settlement while allowing the archdiocese to survive financially, Steward said. California is one of 15 states that allow people to sue institutions for long-standing abuses. This has led to thousands of new cases that have forced several archdioceses into bankruptcy, including San Francisco and Oakland.

California law also allowed treble damages in cases where abuse resulted from a “cover-up” of previous attacks by an employee or volunteer.

“One of our goals was to avoid the bankruptcy process that has affected so many other dioceses,” Stewart said.

The plaintiffs were abused 30, 40 or 50 years ago, Steward said.

“These survivors suffered the aftermath of abuse for decades,” Stewart told the Los Angeles Times. “Dozens of survivors have died. They are getting older, and so are many of those who know about the abuses within the church. It was time to solve this.”

The Los Angeles Catholic Church previously paid $740 million

The archdiocese has promised to better protect its church members and pay hundreds of millions of dollars in various settlements.

Archbishop José H. Gomez apologized in a statement.

“My hope is that this settlement will provide some measure of healing for what these men and women have suffered,” the archbishop added. “I believe we have reached a resolution to these claims that will provide just compensation to the survivors and victims of these past abuses.”

Gomez said the new settlement would be paid for through “reserves, investments and loans, along with other archdiocese assets and payments to be made by religious orders and others named in the lawsuit.”

Hundreds of LA clergy members are accused of abusing minors

More than 300 priests who worked in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles have been accused of sexually abusing minors over decades.

One of those priests was Michael Baker, who was convicted of child abuse in 2007 and released on parole in 2011. In 2013, the archdiocese agreed to pay nearly $10 million to settle four cases in which the now-resigned priest was accused of abuse.

Confidential records show that Baker met with then-Archbishop Roger Mahony in 1986 and confessed to abusing two boys over a period of nearly seven years.

Mahony removed Baker from the ministry and sent him for psychological treatment, but the priest returned to the ministry and was allowed to be alone with the boys. The priest was only removed from office in 2000 after serving in nine parishes.

Authorities believe Baker abused more than 40 children during his years as a priest, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Church officials say they have made changes

The church now has strict background and reporting requirements for priests and extensive training programs for staff and volunteers to protect young people, said Gomez, who succeeded Mahony after he retired as archbishop of Los Angeles in 2011. Mahony remains cardinal.

“Today, as a result of these reforms, new cases of sexual misconduct by priests and clergy involving minors are rare in the archdiocese,” Gomez told the Los Angeles Times. “No one found to have harmed a minor is currently serving in ministry. And I promise: we will remain vigilant.”

As part of the new settlement, the archdiocese will make public more files documenting abuse by priests.

“I’m not excusing anything, but the fact remains that the archdiocese today is a very different place than it was 40, 50, 60 years ago,” said Kirk Dillman, an attorney representing the archdiocese. “The understanding of abuse is very different and more advanced than it was then. That is why we have set up programs since the 1990s, a zero-tolerance policy.”