Landmark settlement hits close to home

PORTLAND, ORE. — In a landmark settlement, the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus, the parent order to Jesuits in Montana, Alaska, Washington, Idaho and Oregon, has agreed to pay $166.1 million to more than 500 survivors of sex-abuse who filed claims spanning a 40-year period.

Throughout the northwest, there were many orphanages and schools, including the now defunct St. Ignatius Mission, that were run by the Jesuits.

Andrew Chasan is a Boise personal injury attorney who is part of a legal team representing 141 clients, nine of whom are from the St. Ignatius area. According to Chasan, there were three notorious pedophiles at that school together and at different times: Father Robinson, Father Ferriti and Brother Charlie Gallant.

“There were a countless number of people who attended the St. Ignatius Ursuline School,” Chasan said. “Many of the people that were abused are dead now. Most of the people who made a claim are around 60 years old.”

According to Chasan, the vast majority of survivors were abused when they were 10 years old, or younger, and have lived with the immense burden of shame for years.

“Most people were not willing to come forward and needed the courage to know that others were coming forward along with them,” he said. “The court ordered a notice to be published and established a claims period so that people would know they had a right to make the claim and a certain amount of time to make it.”

It wasn’t until the names of credibly accused perpetrators were put in the notice that people began coming forward. When they saw the name of their perpetrator, they knew that they were not the only one, Chasan said.

A steering committee of seven claimants and their attorneys began negotiations with the church and its main insurer more than a year ago, a press release from the law firm dated March 25 said.

But according to Chasan, his firm has been involved in some form of litigation for more than three years. The first stage was the negotiation of the settlement. Now, a lengthy process of claims review will determine the appropriate award to each individual claimant.

The settlement is believed to be the single-largest clergy sex-abuse bankruptcy offer in the United States, both in number of claimants and size of award.

“So many of our clients’ lives have been irreparably damaged by the horrific conduct of these Jesuit priests,” attorney Timothy Walton said in the March 25 press release. “So many believed for so long that they were the only one abused, when in fact, the abuse was widespread and prolific.”

They would tell the children, “Don’t tell anyone or you’ll go to hell,” or “It’s okay, I’m a priest.”

“It’s a very difficult recovery for a survivor, for a secret like that to have had power over you,” Chasan said. “Almost every single time I interviewed a client, I was the very first person that they had told. In the few rare cases when they had told their parents, they were often not believed.”

He added, some of the most vulnerable victims were the children of the devout.

The Jesuits filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009, which meant that they had assets, but they filed a bankruptcy in order to file all the claims in an organized way. There were two major sources of funding for the claims settlement, Chasan said, the insurance companies and the church’s assets.

There are also non-monetary requirements that the Jesuits have agreed to. First, they agreed to publish a list of known perpetrators from the last 10 years on their website. They will allow survivors to publish stories of their abuse on their website as well.

The church said it will send letters of apology to all the claimants stating that the survivor was not at fault. The head of the order, called the provincial, said he will meet with any survivor personally for the next five years. The church will personally thank the survivors for the courage to come forward and, Chasan said, they will begin greater education to all children about child sexual abuse.

Finally, there is a category called future claimants that will allow people to file late, as long as they meet certain criteria.

For more information or to file a claim, call Chasan and Walton’s office in Boise at (208) 345-3760. The court has waived any statute of limitations defense.