Boston Church Abuse Deal Poised to Go Through

BOSTON (Reuters) - The Archdiocese of Boston's $85 million offer to settle hundreds of clergy sexual abuse lawsuits is on the verge of being formally approved, lawyers familiar with the situation said on Thursday.The archdiocese, the epicenter of a pedophile priest scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Church, agreed last month to make the largest single payout by a U.S. Catholic diocese to settle claims of clergy sexual abuse.

For the settlement to proceed, however, at least 80 percent of the more than 500 plaintiffs must formally accept the archdiocese's offer by signing settlement agreements by next Thursday. Roderick MacLeish, a lawyer representing roughly half of the plaintiffs, said most clergy abuse victims had accepted the church's offer, but not all of the signed forms had been turned over."Eighty percent of the agreements have been signed as of today. They just haven't all been delivered," MacLeish told Reuters.The archdiocese said the 80 percent threshold had not yet been reached, but most likely would be very soon.

"(We are) very optimistic that we will receive signed settlement agreements from at least eighty-percent of the claimants in the very near future," the archdiocese said in a statement.

Each plaintiff who accepts the settlement will receive between $80,000 and $300,000, depending on the degree of abuse suffered at the hands of priests. The payments are scheduled to be made by Dec. 23.

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http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=2VAPYLUVQYBGWCRBAELCFEY?type=domesticNews&storyID=3632344

No wonder so much praying to the Almighty is going in this week....

I know they cried about that last year...:cry:...but they have a lot of assets left. They have an unbelievable collection of real estate worth $$billions$$, and they have also taken action to protect a lot of these assets by creating independent corporations.

By the way, those plaintinffs deserve every $ they're getting. They should divvy up ALL the assets and give it to the victims...

instead of having to pay out this much hush money.