San Francisco, USA - Two brothers who say they were molested by a pedophile priest in 1972 have settled a lawsuit against the San Francisco Roman Catholic Archdiocese for $1.3 million each, lawyers said Thursday.
The agreements, reached as trials were about to begin Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court, came a month after four other lawsuits blaming the archdiocese for molestations by former Monsignor Patrick O'Shea were settled for $4 million.
The suits were filed in 2003 under a state law that suspended the normal legal deadlines for suing churches and other institutions for sexual abuse by their employees. The archdiocese says it has settled 33 suits for more than $43 million and faces 12 more.
O'Shea, 72, recently admitted during a deposition that he had molested altar boys over several years. He was defrocked in 1994 and charged a year later with molesting nine boys from 1969 to 1980 and spent more than two years in jail awaiting trial. The charges were dismissed after a California law that allowed prosecution of molestation cases from decades ago was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003. O'Shea was convicted last year of stealing about $200,000 from the church but was not sentenced to additional time in jail.
Attorney Rob Waters said the plaintiffs in Tuesday's case had been 11 and 14 years old when O'Shea, then assigned to the Most Holy Redeemer Parish in San Francisco, took them to his trailer at Lake Berryessa, gave them alcohol, forcibly restrained them and molested them.
Waters quoted the older brother, Scott Lewis, now 47 and a resident of the Sierra foothills, as saying that he "feels like he can wake up now from this bad dream.'' The younger brother sued anonymously.
The archdiocese issued a statement saying it did not dispute that O'Shea had molested the two boys when he was a priest. "Our sorrow is heartfelt for the pain and suffering that has come to abuse victims and their families,'' said Bishop John Webster, the archdiocese administrator.