LOS ANGELES, Dec. 3 -- The Roman Catholic diocese for suburban Orange County has agreed to settle claims from 87 people who say they were sexually abused by priests and other church employees with a sum that reportedly would exceed the record $85 million paid by the Archdiocese of Boston last year.
The size of the settlement, announced late Thursday to an emotional group of plaintiffs who waited out negotiations at a downtown courthouse, could have a major impact on church sexual abuse cases pending across the country, lawyers said.
Though details remain under a court gag order, it is clear that the individual awards will be far larger than in Boston, where the settlement was shared by more than 550 victims. Lawyers and others said the Orange County case could encourage more people to file suits, raise the expectations for settlement sums -- and possibly send more dioceses into bankruptcy.
"It's devastating for the church. Devastating," said Jay P. Dolan, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and author of a book on American Catholicism. "This impacts all of the services the church provides."
Victims, though, cheered an agreement that they said recognizes their years of silent torment and could mark a new start for the church.
"This is a great step in changing the culture," said Joelle Casteix, 34, a woman from Corona Del Mar, Calif., who said officials at her parochial high school dismissed her attempts to seek help when she was molested by a choir director. "It's a first step in a lot of healing."
The settlement covers allegations of abuse stretching back at least 40 years and involving 30 clergy and about a dozen lay employees. Of the 22 priests accused, none still alive is working today in ministry.
The Rev. Joe Fenton, director of media relations for the Diocese of Orange, said it has not yet been determined how the diocese will pay the settlement "except that it will be paid." He said the money will come from the diocese and its insurers, not from individual parishes, and he acknowledged that the payment would "severely limit" diocese operations, including training programs and charitable efforts.
But while some dioceses, including those in Tucson; Spokane, Wash.; and Portland, Ore., have been forced by the mounting legal costs to file for bankruptcy, Fenton insisted that Orange will not.
Bishop Tod D. Brown released a statement calling the settlement "fair and compassionate" and saying, "We will be able to fairly compensate the victims in a way that allows our church to continue our ministry of service to the entire community."
Victims and their attorneys praised Brown for resolving the cases relatively quickly and for pledging to write individual letters of apology to each of the victims. Brown also personally greeted and comforted many of the plaintiffs at the courthouse Thursday.
Katherine K. Freberg, a lawyer based in Irvine, Calif., who is representing sexual abuse plaintiffs from across the state, said that compared with other dioceses, Orange showed "more willingness to produce documents, more transparency in what we have seen."
"There are still problems, but . . . this really was handled quite differently," she said.
The settlement reached its record size in large part because of a law passed by the California legislature to enable victims of sexual abuse to sue institutions that had failed to protect them no matter how long ago the abuse occurred. In most states, plaintiffs run up against statutes of limitations that give them less leverage in lawsuits.
The impact of the settlement will be felt most sharply in other California dioceses, notably the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where about 540 cases are pending. The latest settlement could speed an agreement in Los Angeles, predicted Raymond P. Boucher, an attorney for about 300 victims there as well as 14 from Orange County, now that the Orange case offers some "barometers of valuation" for Los Angeles to follow.
For some of the plaintiffs, the news of the settlement brought mixed emotions.
"I've been sitting at the edge of my seat for two years, but now that this day has come, I'm really just at a loss of words," said a 41-year-old woman who asked not to be identified. Molested at age 10 by a priest at her school, she said she is only now finding the strength to fight addiction problems and get a college degree.
"I don't think money can repair the things taken from me," she said. "I still don't feel comfortable inside my own skin."
