Settlements not cure-all for clergy victims

BOSTON -- For John Robitaille, a $49,000 settlement from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fall River allowed him to close a legal chapter in his life, but it couldn't erase the emotional scars of being molested by his family priest.

John Sacco said the $2.5 million settlement paid to him and five siblings for abuse by the Rev. John Geoghan in Boston did little but cause a family rift.

As more than 500 clergy sex abuse victims decide whether to accept an $85 million settlement with the Boston Archdiocese, victims who settled cases earlier warn them not to expect a cure-all.

"Even today, when I read or see news coverage of this, I can't escape thinking of what happened to me as a child," Robitaille said. "That's never going to go away and I don't think there's any form of compensation that can ever correct that."

The 552 plaintiffs in the Boston cases have a little over a month to decide whether to join in the settlement. If they participate, a mediator will decide how much they will receive.

Although it's the largest payout ever by a U.S. diocese in a clergy sex abuse case, the individual amounts will be smaller than some other settlements. Each victim is expected to get between $80,000 and 300,000, based on the severity, duration and extent of harm caused by the abuse.

Mistaken thoughts

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said many victims mistakenly believe that milestones such as seeing a priest indicted or settling their lawsuits will put an end to their problems.

"We've got this desperate longing to have those milestones dramatically lighten our load, but the truth is, if I'm drug-addicted or depressed or have had failed intimate relationships before any of those milestones, I'll still have these things afterward," Clohessy said.

Still, Clohessy and other victims said settlements can give them a sense of validation -- an acknowledgment by the church that they were harmed by priests.

Whether Gary Bergeron decides to accept the money or not, the settlement means the Boston Archdiocese has admitted that he and more than 500 others were wronged, he said.

"From this day forward, I am not an alleged victim of clergy abuse. I am recognized," said Bergeron, who said he was sexually abused by the Rev. Joseph Birmingham at the Church of St. Michael in Lowell in the 1970s.

Barbara Blaine, who started SNAP in 1989 in Chicago, said the $80,000 settlement she received from the Diocese of Toledo, Ohio, gave her a "minimal validation that something happened that was wrong."

"But it didn't feel like it was a just settlement by any means," she said. She used some of her settlement to pay off the debt she had built up for psychological counseling.

Some victims may initially feel worse after reaching a settlement because they had big expectations on what it will do for them emotionally, said Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating adults who were sexually abused as children.

"They recognize that nothing's changed, that nothing that has happened can give them back what they lost," she said. "They can't be 10 again, or 12 again, or 13 and innocent again."

Thomas Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University in California, said he has seen a wide variety of reactions to sex abuse settlements from patients he sees in his private practice.

"Some people have talked about feeling a certain degree of emptiness," Plante said. "Some have even expressed guilt over a settlement."

"If you build something up and work so hard for something, after that initial few days of excitement and joy, there's that question of 'now what?"'

Robitaille said he suffered from low self-esteem and depression for years after he was abused as a child by the Rev. James Porter in the early 1960s at St. Mary's Church in North Attleboro. He said he improved with help from a good therapist and a supportive wife.

"For little kids to be sexually assaulted by someone who represents God, especially when you're brought up in a household where a priest was considered God, it screws you up," he said.

Sacco said that since the settlement he and his four brothers and one sister received in 1998, he and his siblings are no longer close, an estrangement he blames on the public exposure they faced during the lawsuit and the stressful settlement process.

Sacco said he understands that for many of the victims involved in the Boston lawsuits, "a settlement is all they can do."

But he said settlements do not usually have the effect people expect.

"I imagine that people think the depression goes away when the money comes in, but it doesn't," he said. "People are anticipating the money to be a fix-all. It's not."