BRITAIN
Sun Online
By PETE BELL
Sun Online
CATHOLIC Church leaders have been ordered to pay over £600,000 compensation to a man after a priest sexually abused him as a child.
The man, identified in court as "A", was abused over a ten year period from the age of seven by paedophile Father Christopher Clonan - his priest at Christ The King Church in Coventry.
The award was made today in Manchester after the High Court heard the man, now 35, suffers from schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder. He has lived in a mental home since 2000.
The sick priest escaped justice by fleeing Coventry in 1992. Police are now convinced he is dead.
Compensation - mostly for loss of past and future earnings - was awarded against the Archbishop of Birmingham and the trustees of the Birmingham Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church.
Archdiocese of Birmingham spokesman Peter Jennings said the church hoped the settlement would bring an end to the "distress and anguish" the victim has suffered.