CALIFORNIA
LA Weekly
by Jeffrey Anderson
Observers of the Catholic Church sex scandal saw for the first time last Friday what passes for mass closure in these parts. The Diocese of Orange agreed to pay $100 million to 87 victims of 31 priests — minus 40 percent for the victims’ lawyers.
Comes out to less than a million per victim, after the lawyers get paid, but it is a record settlement by the Orange Diocese, which has been crippled for the past year by revelations of corrupt priests and bishops and seemingly complicit D.A.s and cops. Eclipses the $85 million Boston settlement and every other diocese in the country, where for decades priests have buggered little boys, while vicars, bishops and cardinals let them.
Victims had huddled in a Los Angeles courtroom corridor for days, beckoned by their attorneys, who after haggling with the church behind closed doors for two years sensed that the end was near. The end, according to sex-abuse victims in Los Angeles who have weathered a similar ordeal but are dreading the same result, of the most choreographed, pre-ordained and self-serving charade the California legal system could muster.