The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has paid $80 million to 160 victims of sexual abuse by clergy represented by a single law firm since 2000, the lawyer who heads the Minnesota-based firm told reporters Tuesday.
According to a statement issued later by the archdiocese, it has paid around $200 million in all to settle litigation accusing clergy of sexual misconduct over recent decades.
Jeff Anderson, one of the most prominent attorneys representing accusers nationwide, told a Chicago news conference it was the first time he's publicly revealed the sum of payments to clients abused by nearly 50 clergy.
FILE - In this Oct. 23, 2018 file photo, attorney Jeff Anderson speaks at a news conference in San Francisco. Anderson, an attorney for victims of sexual abuse by clergy, says the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has paid $80 million in settlements to clients represented by his law firm alone since 2000. (AP PhotoJeff Chiu, File)
The $80 million includes recent settlements for seven accusers represented by Anderson's Minnesota-based law firm. It doesn't include payments to survivors represented by other law firms, and doesn't include more than 35 still-ongoing cases handled by Anderson and his fellow lawyers.
If the $80 million figure is correct, that means clients of Anderson and his colleagues may have received around 40 percent of the total $200 million in payouts by the archdiocese.
The brief Tuesday statement from the archdiocese said it doesn't disclose settlement payout to specific law firms or individuals. It did acknowledge the payments have strained the budget of the archdiocese, which serves more than 2 million Catholics in and around Chicago.
"The Archdiocese of Chicago has made significant progress in recent years in stabilizing our finances" but still "face challenges due to misconduct settlements, the declining size of our congregation and other factors," the statement said.
A July Chicago Tribune report cited archdiocese officials as estimating they may have to pay $156 million more to settle legal action by survivors in years to come.
Anderson said the payments to his clients over the last 20 years averaged $500,000 per victim, with some payouts to individuals running into the millions of dollars and others only in the tens of thousands of dollars.
The archdiocese fought litigation throughout the '80s and '90s but slowly developed a settlement process, Anderson said. He called the relationship with the archdiocese "arduous and inconsistent" but that there's been a positive "sea change" in approach in recent decades.
"We have so much more to do," he said. "But make no mistake about it: this is progress."
Anderson was asked by a reporter if some might raise eyebrows about how Anderson's law firm has profited from the litigation. He answered: "You're damn right we made a lot of money."
But Anderson, who began representing clergy-abuse victims in the 1980s, said his firm has donated large sums of money to the decades long movement to force the Catholic Church to "come clean" about the abuse. And he said money secured by the firm helped survivors take control of their lives.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A soon-to-be-released Biden administration review of Israel's use of U.S.-provided weapons in its war in Gaza does not conclude that Israel has violated the terms for their use, according to three people who have been briefed on the matter.
The report is expected to be sharply critical of Israel, even though it doesn't conclude that Israel violated terms of U.S.-Israel weapons agreements, according to one U.S. official.
The administration's findings on its close ally's conduct of the war, a first-of-its-kind assessment that was compelled by President Joe Biden's fellow Democrats in Congress, comes after seven months of airstrikes, ground fighting and aid restrictions that have claimed the lives of nearly 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
Biden has tried to walk an ever-finer line in his support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war against Hamas. He has faced growing rancor at home and abroad over the soaring Palestinian death toll and the onset of famine, caused in large part by Israeli restrictions on the movement of food and aid into Gaza. Tensions have been heightened further in recent weeks by Netanyahu’s pledge to expand the Israeli military’s offensive in the crowded southern city of Rafah, despite Biden's adamant opposition.
Biden is in the closing months of a tough reelection campaign against Donald Trump. He faces demands from many Democrats that he cut the flow of offensive weapons to Israel and denunciation from Republicans who accuse him of wavering on support for Israel at its time of need.
Two U.S. officials and a third person briefed on the findings of the national security memorandum to be submitted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Congress discussed the findings before the report's release. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not yet public.
A senior Biden administration official said the memorandum is expected to be released later Friday, but declined to comment on its conclusions.
Axios first reported on the memorandum's findings.
The Democratic administration took one of the first steps toward conditioning military aid to Israel in recent days when it paused a shipment of 3,500 bombs out of concern over Israel’s threatened offensive on Rafah, a southern city crowded with more than a million Palestinians, a senior administration official said.
The presidential directive, agreed to in February, obligated the Defense and State departments to conduct “an assessment of any credible reports or allegations that such defense articles and, as appropriate, defense services, have been used in a manner not consistent with international law, including international humanitarian law.”
The agreement also obligated them to tell Congress whether they deemed that Israel has acted to “arbitrarily to deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly,” delivery of any U.S.-supported humanitarian aid into Gaza for starving civilians there.
Lawmakers and others who advocated for the review said Biden and previous American leaders have followed a double standard when enforcing U.S. laws governing how foreign militaries use U.S. support, an accusation the Biden administration denies. They had urged the administration to make a straightforward legal determination of whether there was credible evidence that specific Israeli airstrikes on schools, crowded neighborhoods, medical workers, aid convoys and other targets, and restrictions on aid shipments into Gaza, violated the laws of war and human rights.
Their opponents argued that a U.S. finding against Israel would weaken it at a time it is battling Hamas and other Iran-backed groups. Any sharply critical findings on Israel are sure to add to pressure on Biden to curb the flow of weapons and money to Israel’s military and further heighten tensions with Netanyahu’s hard-right government over its conduct of the war against Hamas.
Any finding against Israel also could endanger Biden’s support in this year's presidential elections from some voters who keenly support Israel.
At the time the White House agreed to the review, it was working to head off moves from Democratic lawmakers and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont to start restricting shipments of weapons to Israel.
Israel launched its offensive after an Oct. 7 assault into Israel, led by Hamas, killed about 1,200 people. Two-thirds of the Palestinians killed since then have been women and children, according to local health officials. U.S. and U.N. officials say Israeli restrictions on food shipments since Oct. 7 have brought on full-fledged famine in northern Gaza.
Human rights groups long have accused Israeli security forces of committing abuses against Palestinians and have accused Israeli leaders of failing to hold those responsible to account. In January, in a case brought by South Africa, the top U.N. court ordered Israel to do all it could to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but the panel stopped short of ordering an end to the military offensive.
Israel says it is following all U.S. and international law, that it investigates allegations of abuse by its security forces and that its campaign in Gaza is proportional to the existential threat it says is posed by Hamas.
Biden in December said “indiscriminate bombing” was costing Israel international backing. After Israeli forces targeted and killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen in April, the Biden administration for the first time signaled it might cut military aid to Israel if it didn’t change its handling of the war and humanitarian aid.
Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, in the 1980s and early 1990s, were the last presidents to openly hold back weapons or military financing to try to push Israel to change its actions in the region or toward Palestinians.
A report to the Biden administration by an unofficial, self-formed panel including military experts, academics and former State Department officials detailed Israeli strikes on aid convoys, journalists, hospitals, schools and refugee centers and other sites. They argued that the civilian death toll in those strikes — such as an Oct. 31 strike on an apartment building reported to have killed 106 civilians — was disproportionate to the blow against any military target.
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, at a hospital in Rafah, Gaza, Friday, May 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Ismael Abu Dayyah)
U.S. President Joe Biden boards Marine One at Moffett Airfield in Mountain View, Calif., Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Pool Photo via AP)
