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	What Is the Cost of a Sexual Abuse Victim's Well-Being? By Terri McCormick The Citizen July 20, 2007 http://citizenweekly.com/index.cfm?sid=46318&sc=140 A judge in Los Angeles recently approved a $660-million deal to settle 508 lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy. The settlement seems to have come just in time, reached the day before Archbishop Cardinal Roger Mahony was to appear in court. As one commentator pointed out, this turn of events saves victims from being cross-examined, but it also keeps church officials off the stand and somewhat off the hook. It's one thing for the Catholic church to write a cheque and offer a carefully spun apology, but it would be much more satisfying to see those who were directly responsible, being grilled by prosecutors and forced to answer for their role in all of this. Statistics do show that the amount of sex abuse cases linked to the Catholic Church are no higher than those of other religious orders, but they do seem to gain much more media exposure. Regardless, this settlement is worthy of the attention it has generated not just because of the amount, but because it validates that these awful things happened to these people, instead of having the experiences swept under the rug yet again. In his statement, Archbishop Cardinal Mahony apologized to victims and said he hoped the money would bring a measure of healing and some sense of closure, that the cash would "assist victims to rebuild their lives." Yes, $660-million is a lot of money, but how do you put a price tag on someone's emotional well-being? The reality is that cases of this magnitude wouldn't exist if Catholic officials had stopped the systematic sexual abuse by admitting there was a problem all those years ago and properly acting on it. Instead they protected priests who abused children by shuttling them from one parish to another, where they were offered fresh starts and fresh victims. And no amount of money can change that. Contact: smcneish@amherstdaily.com.
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