BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe
By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff | December 30, 2005
The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has offered $7.5 million to about 100 alleged victims of clergy sexual abuse, lawyers in the cases said yesterday.
A lawyer for some of the alleged victims called the proposal ''egregiously disingenuous," and others said the offer would provide far less money to each of their clients than the historic 2003 agreement that settled 554 cases.
The lawyers said the archdiocese's attorney, Thomas H. Hannigan Jr., briefed them over the last week on the details of the archdiocese's proposal. The plan would require many of the claimants to prove their case in a mediation process in which they would be cross-examined and may be forced to confront priests accused of abuse, the alleged victims' lawyers said.