MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Editorial
The $21 settlement that the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese has reached in its five-year-old bankruptcy opens the door to a new beginning for the church and for victims of childhood sexual abuse.
It should allow the victims to find some measure of the justice and peace to which they are entitled while at the same time allowing the church to focus on its mission of being a force for good in the community.
While not perfect, the settlement — if approved by the bankruptcy court — brings to an end a struggle that was longer and more bitter than it needed to be. And while not all the victims of sexual abuse will receive what they were seeking, the deal appears to be the best they could get and offers a reasonable conclusion to the bankruptcy.
The $21 million is far more than the $4 million the archdiocese was offering when it filed an initial reorganization plan in February 2014, as is the number of victims who will be compensated: 330 of the 570 men and women who filed sex abuse claims, more than double the number in the initial filing.
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