ST. LOUIS (MO)
Post-Dispatch
By Jim Suhr
Associated Press
Monday, Feb. 14 2005
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The Archdiocese of St. Louis has agreed to pay $267,500
in mediation to settle seven more cases involving clergy sexual abuse, bringing
to $2.4 million the payout covering 31 cases over the past 13 months, a lawyer
for the archdiocese said Monday.
A claim in an eighth case apparently will be paid by a religious order.
The latest cases settled involved five archdiocesan priests, including three
-- Michael McGrath, Donald "Father Duck" Straub and Robert Yim -- recently
defrocked by the Vatican but never criminally charged.
Another newly settled case involved Romano Ferraro, convicted in May of
raping a boy in Massachusetts in the 1970s. A St. Louis man sued Ferraro in
January 2004, accusing him of raping him in the early 1980s when Ferraro lived
here but was not assigned to any St. Louis parish duties. Ferraro -- suspended
from priestly duties in 1988 -- is serving a life sentence in Massachusetts.