WASHINGTON
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
By VANESSA HO AND CLAUDIA ROWE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS
In 2003, Jeff Alfieri, a burly 43-year-old business agent for Teamsters Local 117, drove to the parking lot of Holy Family Parish in Kirkland and shot himself in the head. It was months after he told his parents and the archdiocese that the Rev. Gerald Moffat had repeatedly molested him in the early '70s.
Yesterday, lawyers for Alfieri's estate and parents said the Archdiocese of Seattle had settled the case for $600,000. But the dollar figure did little to ease their grief -- or even offer resolution.
"Getting the money, I can't tell you what an empty feeling that is," said Sue Alfieri, Jeff's mother. "To equate the life of someone with money, it's just horrible."
Both she and her husband, Ralph, said the ordeal had only convinced them to keep working to ensure that the church is held accountable into the future.
"The question is really, what's happening now?" said Ralph Alfieri. "Does a settlement end the problem with the church? That just answers the economic part of the claim, but we still don't know what's really happening. It's like the lights are off in the stadium, but the game is still going on and we can't see it."
Posted by kshaw at June 11, 2005 06:45 AM