MINNESOTA
Star Tribune
By Jean Hopfensperger Star Tribune AUGUST 3, 2015
Clergy sex abuse claims against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis poured in as the 5 p.m. deadline approached Monday. By the end of the day, the scope of the church’s problem was more clear: Attorneys counted more than 400 claims.
Attorneys representing sex abuse victims had been working around the clock to prepare the claims, stemming from the sexual abuse of children by dozens of Catholic priests over decades.
“It’s been very busy, both over the weekend and today,” said Mike Finnegan, an attorney with the St. Paul law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates. “There’s a lot of people with a lot of questions, some breaking their silence for the first time.”
An official count was not available from the bankruptcy court as of the filing deadline, but 370 claims had been filed as of Monday morning.
Finnegan said the 400 claims tallied represent the third highest number filed against a Catholic institution in bankruptcy. That is partly due to the large number of Catholics in the archdiocese, he said. There are about 800,000 Catholics in the 12-county metro area.
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