Four men who claimed they were abused by a church worker as children will receive a total of $27.5 million as part of a settlement with the Diocese of Brooklyn, in what the victims’ lawyers say is among the largest U.S. awards paid to individual victims of Roman Catholic Church-related abuse.
The Diocese of Brooklyn and an after-school program will pay $27.5 million to settle lawsuits filed by four men who claimed they were abused by a church worker as children. The men each will receive $6.875 million, said lawyers Peter Saghir and Ben Rubinowitz, who represented the unnamed men. The money will largely be paid by the diocese, with a small portion coming from an unnamed after-school program.
“The thing that is atrocious about this is the signs that were missed by his supervisors,” Saghir said. “There were clear warning signs.”
A spokeswoman for the diocese didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The diocese includes 1.5 million Catholics in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. The settlement is the latest in multimillion-dollar payments Catholic dioceses across the country have made to victims in recent decades. In May, the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis announced a $210 million settlement with 450 victims of clergy sexual abuse.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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