The Archdiocese of Miami has agreed to pay $3.4 million to settle almost two dozen lawsuits brought since 2002 by people who accused Catholic priests of sexually abusing them, their lawyer said.
The settlement agreements range from $75,000 to $500,000 and conclude all 23 negligence lawsuits brought by attorney Jeffrey Herman.
He represented more than half of the about 40 former altar boys and other youths who sued the archdiocese after the nation's church abuse scandal broke in 2002. His cases implicated 10 South Florida priests, who were put on administrative leave or resigned.
"The settlements are long overdue validation and vindication for the victims," Herman said Tuesday.
The settlements were not an admission of guilt, archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta said.
"What it does do is bring to conclusion these events so that the church can continue to move on in a financially responsible way and the alleged victims can continue with their healing," Agosta said.
She said that Archbishop John C. Favalora had not decided the fate of priests on administrative leave.
The Revs. Alvaro Guichard, Ricardo Castellanos and Joseph Cinesi were among the priests accused of abusing boys. Castellanos, Guichard and Cinesi, all on administrative leave, have denied the accusations.
"I am suffering from character assassinations," Guichard said Tuesday. "These are all lies to get money from the archdiocese."
Castellanos, through a representative, said: "The settlement was done without consulting me, and I was totally opposed to it."
The family of Miguel Chinchilla, a former altar boy at Church of the Little Flower in Coral Gables, was the first to sue the archdiocese. They alleged that church leaders knew that Castellanos and Guichard sexually abused Miguel as a boy in the mid-1970s. Miguel died of AIDS in 1993.
"My family believes that the archdiocese knew for a long time the facts of this case," Miguel's brother Ignacio Chinchilla said. "It was only through litigation that they had no choice but to take responsibility for the misconduct of these two priests."
Most of the remaining lawsuits are pending.
The Miami diocese is one of the nation's largest, with 430 priests serving 1.2 million Catholics.