'This whole thing's a farce': New Orleans Catholic church sex abuse settlement brings anger and shock | New Orleans clergy abuse | The Guardian
Category: News & Politics
Via: hal-a-lujah • 2 months ago • 29 commentsBy: Lawrence Hecker (the Guardian)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Survivors begin receiving letters with payment amounts months after $305m settlement agreement was struck
Survivors of child rape and other sexual abuse within New Orleans's Roman Catholic archdiocese learned that$641,000 or so is the most they can individually get under a settlement approved in December to resolve a years-long bankruptcy protection case.
Those amounts were communicated in letters that hundreds of clergy abuse survivors participating in the New Orleans archdiocese's bankruptcy began quietly receiving on Tuesday. The figures are well below a $2.4m jury verdict awarded to an unrelated Louisiana religious sexual abuse claimant in June 2025 after the state's legislature temporarily eliminated filing deadlines for such cases.
The amounts cited in the recent letters were also substantially below out-of-court settlements that a handful of clergy abuse survivors in the New Orleans area have reached in the verdict's aftermath with Catholic institutions not affected by the bankruptcy, which evidently have been more or less comparable to the jury award.
Survivors say the amounts in the letters aren't just insulting - but also the latest evidence of the disproportionate advantage enjoyed by the more than 40 Catholic institutions that have gone to federal court to declare amid the financial fallout of the church's worldwide clergy molestation scandal, including nearly 30 such groups that have settled.
"This whole thing's a farce," Aaron Hebert, who was abused by Lawrence Hecker, a late, convicted child rapist and longtime archdiocesan priest, said on Thursday. Richard Coon, who has testified to being molested by three men with links to the archdiocese, added: "There's a lot of survivors that are hurting right now."
Driving the despair which Coon and Hebert described are two elements: the $305m settlement that the archdiocese as well as its insurers on 8 December agreed to pay to clergy abuse survivors to resolve a bankruptcy protection case opened in 2020; and a zero- to 100-point system determining each individual victim's payment.
Settlement disclosure documents that disgusted victims virtually from the outset detail how points would be assigned based on the nature of the abuse, among other elements. Rape, for instance, equated to 75 points within the system; oral or digital abuse was 56 units; and grooming behavior was five.
Additionally, the archdiocese and others made comments in open court promising payments by the end of spring 2026. The process instead dragged, with settlement trustee Don Massey filing motions in court to get the church to turn over records needed to make payment determinations.
"Any promises made by the debtor (the archdiocese and its affiliates) were not made by the settlement trust," Massey said when asked about payments not yet having been doled out. "The settlement trust was not consulted by the debtor prior to making this uninformed promise."
By Thursday, days after the abuse claims valuations concluded, the Guardian and reporting partner WWL Louisiana had confirmed the maximum 100-point payout equated to an "estimated distribution" from the settlement of $641,425.64. That meant each allocated point was worth $6,414.26.
Hebert shared his letter with the outlets. He had been awarded 56 points - or an estimated settlement distribution of $359,198.
Meanwhile, having endured rape and oral sexual abuse by multiple clergy predators, Coon was allocated 98 points. He said it was "shocking" that he did not get maximum points given the circumstances surrounding his claim.
Coon, Hebert and bankruptcy claimant Brian Manix all expressed disbelief that allocation letters given to survivors failed to break down precisely how the claims evaluator, personal injury attorney Richard Arsenault, arrived at their points total. The missives just contained the final sum, the estimated settlement distribution, and an acknowledgment that the bankruptcy may have required them "to revisit deeply personal and difficult experience".
Survivors have 30 days to ask for reconsideration, but without the basis for the points total, they're left to guess why they didn't receive what they expected.
"We asked … for that," Manix said on Thursday. While he declined to publicly disclose his allocation, he confirmed he was not awarded maximum points, saying, "I was raped. I was made to give oral sex, and I was groomed … I need somebody to tell me … what's missing."
Arsenault did not respond on Thursday to a request for comment.
Sources familiar with the process say more than 800 abuse claims were given points allocations. Among them were more than 100 which got scores of zero - such as for claiming abuse by a predator or entity not affiliated with the archdiocese.
Furthermore, the sources said that about $56m from the settlement was being held back for a time to account for successful appeals. And any remaining money held back would then be redistributed to survivors based off their points allocations.
Still, that provided little comfort to Coon, Hebert, Manix and other survivors with whom they said they spoke in recent days. Perhaps most frustratingly for them, survivors who challenge their allocations must pay $1,000 out of pocket, according to a protocol established in December and which the vast majority of claimants approved.
Attorney Richard Trahant, who is part of a legal team representing Coon, Hebert, Manix and roughly 80 other abuse claimants in the New Orleans archdiocese's bankruptcy, said a number of his clients would appeal their points and dollar amounts.
"The $1,000 fee for reconsideration of the point total is obnoxious," Trahant also said. "And we will figure out how to address that in the coming days."
Coon, Hebert and Manix said such factors combined to convince them that bankruptcy court was the wrong venue to be fairly compensated for their abuse - despite assertions by the archdiocese that it was the venue providing the most equitable solution.
As Coon put it: "The bankruptcy was all about protecting the church."
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The power of religion. I can’t imagine going to a priest and getting orally or anally raped, and not questioning their own deluded belief that there is a god somewhere that gives a shit about them. Then they don’t tell their parents or the police and keep going back and receiving more of the same, over and over. At some point you gotta wonder about their own complicity in what they are expecting millions in compensation for. I don’t really have much sympathy since both sides of this nastiness have issues. If you cared about yourself as much as you care about your religion this would never have happened to you.
This is the insidiousness of abuse. Their whole world view gets skewed. I was emotionally abused growing up... I knew it, but what was i going to do? Run away from home? Go where, with what resources? We'd already been to family court over my sister. That was a worse option than just waiting it out until I turned 18 and went into the Army.
I was emotionally abused growing up... I knew it, but what was i going to do?
I had a childhood that was void of familial bonds. Even though there was no broken home circumstances, my older brother hated me, my dad was useless for anything other than funding the household and tutoring me after dinner, and my mom wasn’t much better. The words “I love you” were never spoken, ever, and I have only seen my dad kiss my mom once in my entire life (no doubt as a result of some failed counseling session). But they are still together and it is clear that the weekly church services, Sunday school, choir, and church summer camps were intended to serve the duties that they were neglecting as parents. I always felt that education was the key to getting out of that house and that cycle of daily familial dysfunction, and even though I struggled to make it through college I never took my eye off that prize. I bought a house as an adult that was within walking distance of their house, but I can count on one hand the number of times they had seen the inside of it in the seven years I lived there. Some people really suck at parenting, and when you are the offspring of them you find yourself having to figure it out on your own when you become a parent so you don’t repeat the cycle.
I waited 40+ years to gain control over my abuser and then I made him spend the last 20 months of life in his idea of hell on earth. from personal experience, it's very liberating to threaten clergy that think they've got any kind of spiritual authority over anyone. how'd you like to meet your savior right now?
it's even more gratifying to get physical with them. like the born again thumper dwarf that tried to put 3 underage girls in my condo to share the good word after I had him arrested/trespassed for soliciting in the complex weeks earlier. he lost his hotel meeting room church after being assaulted prior to services a few times. before I sold, the thumpers were getting a lot more militant with their religious soliciting, and the mormon missionaries had learned to chain their bikes to immovable objects.
maybe I was a moor in a past life, because it sure is fun fucking up crusaders and xtian soldiers.
We are fellow survivors. I think there are more of us than we suspect.
Even when I got counseling as an adult my mother would use that passive aggressive bullshit, "...its all my fault. They always want to blame the parents." She was as much a victim of her parents and my stepfather as anyone else. I didn't go out of my way to make her feel bad, she just didn't get absolution from me.
It’s a shame that they were likely just repeating how they were raised themselves. My dad’s side is especially bad at maintaining family bonds. I don’t even know my cousins’ names on his side. Mom’s side was almost as bad, but happily distant.
I just wanted to read the churches had lost their tax exempt status and would be regarded as businesses, and the offending priests and facilitators would be deported after their genitalia was removed and nailed to the church's front doors ...
I do feel bad for those who were abused as children. They've likely been indoctrinated to find their moral compass in the Church, and the Church can do no wrong. And even if the Church, or somebody belonging to it, does wrong, they are told to keep quiet about it for the "greater good". This happens in both Catholic and Protestant churches - church leadership knows exactly what the optics are of having an abuser as a pastor/priest/deacon/etc., so they try to avoid the abuse being acknowledged in public by throwing victims under the bus in private, but convincing those victims that they're sacrificing their own good for a noble cause. You know, just like Jesus did.
I’m assuming you and I had similar paths to godlessness - ie it took far, far less than clergy sexually abusing us to shape and develop our beliefs. I have the same lack of belief that I was born with, even though I was forced to attend church every Sunday as well as choir practice on weeknights. That anyone could experience this level of abuse and not have it affect their belief in an almighty creator that has unconditional love for us as individuals … sorry, but this makes zero sense. Maybe they’re all like … well, god works in mysterious ways and I have come to understand that He wanted me to be rewarded with a ton of reparations money in exchange for being repeatedly raped by the servant of God that I’ve been told to trust the most as a child.
No, I was raised in evangelical churches, and was a believer until my late 30s. Newsvine pretty much was the end of my religious beliefs. I had been wavering for a while, but participating in religious debates there finished them off.
When someone says "the amount of money you are offering me is an insult" that is a red flag to me that they are interested in getting paid.
Just this last week there was news in Chicago about a well known priest here named Fr. Michael Pfleger. He is well known as a white priest (pastor) in an all black neighborhood , as he has been for 30 years plus, and as a social justice advocate for his relatively poor parish. He has made national news on a few occasions over those 30 years, most notably because he is a friend of Barack Obama. Anyway , he was recently removed from his parish for a few months while a child sexual abuse claim against him was investigated by the Archdiocese. Last week he was re-installed because there was no evidence of the abuse. This is the third time this man has been subjected to this type of investigation. Always without evidence. Some people want to get paid.
I am not defending guilty priests and there are many over the course of 60 or 70 years.
Child sexual abuse occurs anywhere where those (usually men) who have a sexual attraction to children have access to children which can be unsupervised. It happens in churches, schools, sports teams, scouting organizations, etc. It has nothing to do with religion.
Where it occurs most often, by far, though is inside extended families.
So?
The Church showed us for decades that it was going to do everything in its power to prevent priests from being held accountable criminally, and it was successful most of the time.
That leaves civil court solutions, and those are pretty much always going to be monetary.
Agreed, but those organizations are rarely as prone to pinning accountability for the crime on the victims as churches are. Schools don't offer a reward for suffering in the next life. Scouts don't tell victims it's their duty to suffer in silence to the gospel of Boy Scouts of America can continue to spread where people have never heard of Scouting before. Sports teams don't tell kids their coaches raped them because their uniforms were too short.
CO-PILOT
🧭 What actually drives the risk
Opportunity structures — Abuse occurs where adults have repeated access to children, especially in settings built on trust.
Power imbalances — Adults in authority roles (coaches, clergy, teachers) can manipulate trust or obedience.
Lack of oversight — Environments with poor supervision, opaque procedures, or weak reporting systems create openings.
Cultural silence — Communities that discourage questioning authority or “making trouble” unintentionally shield abusers.
Grooming dynamics — Abusers often cultivate trust with both children and adults to reduce suspicion.
None of these factors are tied to a particular religion, political ideology, or type of organization. They’re tied to human behavior and structural vulnerabilities.
🧩 Why people mistakenly blame specific institutions
Institutions like churches or schools are high‑trust environments, so abuse cases there receive intense public attention.
When abuse is uncovered, it’s easy to assume the institution caused it, rather than recognizing that the institution simply provided access.
Some institutions historically failed to report or acted defensively, which worsened harm — but the underlying cause remains individual offenders exploiting access.
So as a confirmed and pretty vocal atheist you are blaming religion itself. What a surprise.
Rather than get pissed at me for blaming the Church (which is not, BTW, the religion), maybe blame the Church for helping priests get away with abusing kids, and don't blame the kids for getting their own back in the only way the machinations of the Church allowed.
As a confirmed Catholic, you are blaming the victims for not taking it quietly enough to suit you.
I'm not blaming the victims, it is very well known that the Catholic Church has acknowledged hundreds of cases of child sexual abuse by priests over a long period of time.
How many articles have you seeded about child sex abuse in public schools ? I dont recall any. The Catholic Church is perceived as having deep pockets and being particularly vulnerable to these claims. The victims and their lawyers calling offers of hundreds of thousands of dollars "insulting" says more than you seem to reallize.
COPILOT
Child sexual abuse in U.S. public schools is far more widespread, underreported, and systemically enabled than most people realize. The data across multiple verified 2026 reports shows a pattern: high prevalence, low reporting, weak oversight, and significant mental‑health harm to victims.
Read, John. I never said you blamed them for being abused. I said you're blaming them for not taking the abuse quietly enough, because you're doing exactly that. Why do you get to decide how much compensation they deserve from an organization that fostered their abuse with one hand while taking money from their parents in the form of tithes with the other?
I know what those words say, and I know how you're reading them.
You're blaming the victims for not taking it up the ass quietly enough, and making the Church that enabled their abuse into a victim.
I am not blaming anyone other than the perpetrators. I do question the intentions of someone (most likely the lawyers) who say they are insulted by a monetary offer.
You can have the last word I said what I wanted to say.
I forgot this one.
So the fuck what?
Do you think that a person's concern for issues is only measured by the articles they seed? I'd call that bizarre, but I know deflection when I see it. It doesn't only apply to politics, as you prove.
I was fortunate enough to be relieved of having to go to church after my mom thought the pastor was hitting on her. I also got to quit the boy scout troop based out of the same church. a few months later that small town conservative evangelical church got caught up in a wife swapping scandal that was all over the local paper, plus another scandal where one scout master was embezzling the scout troops account, while the other was giving jerk-off lessons during campouts.
the catholic church has always thought they were independent of any government as a whole, with their own community within a community concept. along with that concept, they think their version of god's law supersedes any other laws, with the clergy hierarchy as the legal arbiters. relocate the perp, kill the story, and bury the evidence. like other ultra conservative organizations, the victims are never more than secondary at best to the optics involved in upholding the status of the church. the church wants to control everything internally to protect the church's reputation, and especially it's income stream, their sole concern.
what needs to happen is to escalate the level of punishments for those that commit sex crimes from a position of trust and authority. who knows how many priests running around loose that are repeat offenders, after being moved to a different parish for an offense, instead of being turned over to law enforcement and prosecuted. seems to me a sharp blade would easily correct a failed vow of celibacy and also be a pretty strong deterrent to any other priest seeking carnal knowledge with the vulnerable.
I remember when the scandal broke in the late 90s-early aughts, I was listening to a segment on NPR about it, and they reported that the Church had declined to cooperate with law enforcement, and said they'd handle it internally. Um, what? No. Not acceptable.
I'd make every one of those cross bearing clip joints zero out on paper every year just to keep their tax exempt status. I'd also charge them the going business rates for any state, county, or municipal services. I'd tax their held assets, any gifts they received exceeding a specific amount, prohibit undocumented cash contributions, tax any contributions the church makes to any non-approved entity, and forbid IRS tax credits to their members as a charitable organization. I'd also forbid any federal funding to, or official business with, church owned businesses that play the "against our religion" games.
So they didn't care about breaking the law
Sounds a tad money hungry to me.
Maybe the Vatican can find something in its basement to sell.
These folks will have a lifetime of trauma to overcome. Trauma that might become generational. The amount should be punitive to the organization that enabled the abuse.
I'm bothered by this"
How do you put a point value on sexual abuse? Does it matter whether it was oral, anal, or digital? Rape is rape and a traumatic experience.
the church put their money towards expensive legal representation that would negotiate the settlement down from what the victims deserved, to less than it would be including attorneys fees ...
the catholic church has been around long enough to know that brick and mortar buildings are more difficult to be burned to the ground.
It always comes down to a formula to determine how big your piece of the pie should be. The same thing happens in medical malpractice lawsuits. Compensation for death by negligence is determined by what an individual’s life is worth in dollars, based on metrics that make you less like a human and more like a video game character.