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Archdiocese of Los Angeles will pay $880 million to settle sexual abuse claims

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

The Catholic archdiocese in Los Angeles has agreed to a massive settlement with more than 1,000 people who say they were sexually abused, dating as far back as the 1950s. Except for a few outstanding cases, it ends a quarter-century of lawsuits against the most populous archdiocese in the U.S. Steve Futterman reports.

STEVE FUTTERMAN, BYLINE: The agreement calls for the church to pay more than $800 million to 1,353 people who say they were abused by Catholic priests.

MORGAN STEWART: I'd say historic. It is, to my knowledge, the largest Catholic diocese settlement in the United States to date.

FUTTERMAN: Attorney Morgan Stewart helped lead the settlement negotiations. His firm represents many of the survivors involved in the case. He has spoken with many of them.

STEWART: The reaction is a mixture of emotions - relief, happiness, dismay that this happened in the first instance.

FUTTERMAN: The $880 million settlement, coupled with a previous settlement, brings the total payout to more than $1.5 billion. In a statement, the archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, says he hopes the settlement will provide some measure of healing. Attorney Kirk Dillman represents the archdiocese.

KIRK DILLMAN: Did abuse occur? And I think the answer to that is unequivocally, yes. The second question is, what do we do about that? And the church has stepped up to say, we are going to reach as deeply as we possibly can to compensate these people who have suffered.

FUTTERMAN: Survivor advocate groups like the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, praise the settlement, but not the church. Dan McNevin leads the California chapter of SNAP.

DAN MCNEVIN: They want to be praised, but I think they should not be praised for being forced to reckon with what amounts to an intentional cover-up. They are settling these cases because they're afraid to expose these cases to juries.

FUTTERMAN: The church says it has incorporated safeguards to prevent similar abuse from occurring in the future. More than 300 priests in the LA archdiocese have been accused over the years of abusing minors. For NPR News, I'm Steve Futterman in Los Angeles.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPECTIVE'S "VISION") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Steve Futterman
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