Archdiocese and accuser reach deal for $22,500

ST. LOUIS -- The St. Louis Archdiocese and a 29-year-old man reached a $22,500 settlement this week over claims that a Roman Catholic priest had sexually fondled the alleged victim at a boys home in the 1980s.

The settlement, reached in mediation and announced Friday, puts to rest litigation and countercharges among Arthur Andreas of St. Louis; the Rev. Alexander Anderson, pastor at Most Sacred Heart Church in Eureka; and the archdiocese.

Archdiocesan officials said they do not believe Andreas' claims have merit but agreed to help him pay for therapy.

Anderson also maintained his innocence and asked that the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests take him off its list of child abusers. He said at a news conference Friday that he prays for his accuser and forgives him, and that SNAP, "is slow to disbelieve allegations."

'Pastoral act of charity'

Monsignor Richard Stika, vicar general of the St. Louis Archdiocese, said the settlement is "not meant as a payoff. It's a pastoral act of charity." He said Andreas had had a difficult life and appeared to need help.

Andreas approached the archdiocese in March 2002 after church officials invited victims to report any abuse, said his attorney Patrick Noaker. He alleged the priest had begun fondling Andreas in 1986 at the St. Joseph Home for Boys, a residential treatment center in St. Louis, while the priest was a chaplain to the religious sisters who ran the home. Andreas, who lived at the home, was 12 at the time.

That July, Anderson filed a civil defamation suit against Andreas, who countersued Anderson and the archdiocese.

A second accuser, called "John Doe," came forward in January, saying Anderson fondled him 15 years ago when he lived at the boys home.

Stika said a panel listened to John Doe's allegations and talked to the home's former director. The group concluded that case had no merit.

David Clohessy, national director of SNAP, said Friday he knows of a third person who alleges abuse by Anderson. He finds church officials' insistence of Anderson's innocence "just stunning."

"He's a child molester," Clohessy said at SNAP's own news conference. "He should not be around kids."

For the last 10 years, the St. Louis Archdiocese has had a committee of lay people that investigates sexual abuse claims. In November, the archdiocese began mediating cases in litigation to resolve them out of court.

Consulting attorney Bernard Huger said four cases involving two former priests had been resolved in the last month.

The archdiocese announced in December it has spent $3.1 million in direct payments and other expenses on cases involving sexual abuse since 1994.

Law professor Patrick J. Schiltz of Minneapolis spent a career defending Protestant and Catholic churches against sexual charges in the 1980s and '90s. He said he found that in the "vast majority" of cases, the accusations are true.

He added, however, that the percentage of false or wildly exaggerated accusations has grown in last two or three years. "But I still sense they are a small minority," he said.

Schiltz, who had no involvement in the St. Louis case, said he often paid settlements where clients were innocent, "because litigation is so expensive. It happens all the time."