NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — A diocese in New Jersey has agreed to pay $87.5 million to settle hundreds of sexual abuse claims, one of the largest settlements involving the Catholic Church in the United States.
The agreement between the diocese of Camden, near Philadelphia, and 300 victims regarding abuse committed by priests in the 1970s and 1980s was announced on Tuesday.
The payout is larger than the nearly $85 million settlement in 2003 in the clergy abuse scandal in Boston but is less than other settlements in California and Oregon, according to US media.
The site bishop-accountability.org says that only four agreements have exceeded $100 million since the early 2000s.
Dennis Sullivan, the bishop of the Camden diocese, expressed his “sincere apology” to all the victims and pledged his commitment to ensuring such abuse never occurs again.
The diocese declared bankruptcy in 2020 and named 56 priests and a deacon believed to have abused children.
A bankruptcy judge is expected to approve the deal in June and the money will be paid into a trust compensating the victims.
The US Catholic Church has been rocked by years of accusations and revelations of sexual abuse committed by priests.
Between 1950 and 2016 the US Catholic Church received 18,500 complaints against 6,700 members of the clergy, according to bishop-accountability.org.
Several senior church members in the US have been forced to resign for protecting sex offender priests, including the late cardinal Bernard Law.
Last year, former US cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the most senior Roman Catholic official in America to face criminal charges in the massive clergy abuse scandal, pleaded not guilty to charges that he sexually assaulted a teenage boy.
© Agence France-Presse