By Dietrich Knauth
NEW YORK, May 1 (Reuters) - The Catholic Archdiocese of New York has agreed to pay $800 million in a settlement with 1,300 sex abuse survivors, one of the largest payouts in a wave of lawsuits over clergy sex abuse in the United States.
The settlement is second only to the $880 million deal reached by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2024. The Catholic Church has paid billions of dollars in settlements across the U.S. in the past several years, after New York and other states enacted
laws that temporarily enabled victims of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits over decades-old crimes.
Jeff Anderson, an attorney representing abuse survivors, said that the settlement was a triumph that would end nearly six years of legal battles with the archdiocese and its insurers. The proposed settlement is subject to final documentation and full survivor agreement before it is complete, Anderson said.
In addition to the $800 million payment, the Archdiocese agreed to release documents pertaining to sexual offenders in the Church.
“It is far from full accountability, but it is a measure of responsibility,” Anderson said in a Friday statement.
The settlement will allow abuse survivors to litigate against the Church’s insurers for additional payouts.
The settlement is also notable in that it avoids a bankruptcy by the archdiocese. New York’s Child Victims Act, passed in 2019, and similar laws in other states have driven many large Catholic organizations to seek bankruptcy protection around the U.S.
In New York, every diocese except for the New York archdiocese and the Brooklyn Diocese has filed for bankruptcy to finalize similar settlements of sex abuse lawsuits.
The church and survivors began mediation in December before retired Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Daniel Buckley, who also mediated the Los Angeles settlement. In a statement at the time, Cardinal Timothy Dolan acknowledged that sexual abuse of minors had been a shameful chapter of the Church's past.
(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth, Editing by William Maclean)
