Eight Clergy Abuse Victims Receive $880,000 Settlement

By Jan Ransom
Boston Globe
April 10, 2017

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/04/10/eight-clergy-abuse-victims-receive-settlement-case-involving-cape-priest/Nj7pCOI9rx6bHYEbzdTdKI/story.html

The Diocese of Fall River has agreed to an $880,000 settlement with eight men who as children were sexually abused by a West Harwich priest, the victims’ attorney announced Monday.

The late Reverend James Nickel, who served at Holy Trinity Parish in West Harwich, allegedly sexually abused at least eight boys in the early 1970s and 1980s, some as many as 50 times over several years. Attorneys for the men suspect there are more victims.

“Father Nickel was a serial pedophile,” Mitchell Garabedian, the attorney for the victims, said at a press conference. “Once again, we have a coverup at the highest level of our religious order.”

Garabedian said that Nickel sexually abused boys in various parishes throughout the country and in the Bahamas, including Marsh Harbour, West Harwich, Illinois, New York, Washington D.C., Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Nickel died in 2008.