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	Del. Priest Abuse Lawsuit Settled for $1.7 Million NECN January 5, 2011 http://www.necn.com/01/05/11/Del-priest-abuse-lawsuit-settled-for-17-/landing_nation.html?&blockID=3&apID=666e1542466c452481a47129403deeff A Delaware man reached a $1.7 million settlement Wednesday with a small Maryland parish that housed a pedophile priest who abused him in the 1980s. As part of the settlement, the parish will issue a public apology and acknowledge that Joseph Curry was molested by the late Rev. Edward Carley, attorneys in the case said. The abuse began in 1981, when Curry was 10 and was training to become an altar boy at St. Dennis Church in Galena, where Carley was the pastor, according to the lawsuit. It continued until 1986, and Curry was abused hundreds of times, the lawsuit claimed. The parish is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Del., which publicly identified Carley in 2005 as a priest who had sexually abused children. Carley died in 1998. Opening statements in the trial of Curry's lawsuit against the parish had been scheduled for Wednesday. Curry also sued the diocese, but that portion of the lawsuit was delayed after the diocese declared bankruptcy. Curry, 40, of Smyrna, Del., said he did not harbor any ill will toward the parishioners of St. Dennis. "I do not hold St. Dennis responsible for a few bad apples. There's a lot of good Catholics, a lot of good people outraged by these behaviors that were covered up over the years," he said. Curry will not press for enforcement of the judgment until after the bankruptcy proceedings are over. His attorneys hope to use the award as leverage against the diocese and are asking its leaders to live up to a previous promise and pay an average of $1.2 million to victims of childhood sexual abuse. The diocese plans to submit a new bankruptcy plan to a judge on Monday. The settlement guarantees Curry $1.7 million, and if he doesn't receive an equal or greater amount in the bankruptcy proceedings, he will seek the remainder from the parish, said Thomas Crumplar, his attorney. Mark L. Reardon, an attorney for the parish, said he was confident that the diocese and its insurance carriers would ultimately pay the judgment and protect St. Dennis. The parish was motivated to settle in part because it felt "a lingering and overriding moral and compassionate justification to provide some aid to a human being crisis," Reardon said. The Rev. Leonard J. Blakely, the current pastor of St. Dennis, said he was eager to make a formal apology to Curry once the legal red tape is removed. "We admit and accept the responsibility of what happened to Mr. Curry, and we're deeply sorry that anybody from our parish's life has been affected in this way," Blakely said. The Associated Press typically does not name alleged victims of sexual abuse, but Curry has spoken publicly about the allegations. Two other victims of Carley reached similar settlements with a parish in Wilmington. And last month, a jury found another Wilmington parish negligent for failing to protect a victim of defrocked priest Francis DeLuca. That parish, St. Elizabeth's, was ordered to pay $3 million of the $30 million in compensatory damages awarded to the victim.
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