San Francisco archdiocese settles 15 priest abuse claims for $21.2 million

Saturday, June 11, 2005 | 12:47 p.m.

SAN FRANCISCO - The Archdiocese of San Francisco agreed Friday to settle 15 pending lawsuits for $21.2 million involving allegations of sexual abuse by priests under its jurisdiction, according to a statement from the church.

Under the settlement, which was brokered by a retired judge who has been mediating 60 separate cases against the San Francisco archdiocese, the archdiocese will pay out $6.6 million, and the rest of the money will come from its insurers. Several of those original 60 cases have already gone to trial.

The 15 cases represent about one-quarter of the remaining priest abuse lawsuits naming the San Francisco archdiocese as a primary defendant - and 10 of them involve allegations against one former San Jose priest, the late Rev. Joseph Pritchard.

"During the course of the recent trials and settlement discussions, we have heard the victims' anger and grief over the impact that the abuse has had on their lives and the lives of their families and friends," said San Francisco Archbishop William Levada. "It is our hope that the settlement of these cases will facilitate the process of healing for these victims and also set the stage for a global settlement of the remaining cases."

San Jose attorney Robert Mezzetti Jr., the court-appointed mediator, said retired Judge Coleman Fannin deserves the credit for persuading the insurance companies to pay up instead of having the cases proceed to trial.

"The case did not settle because of the archbishop. The case settled because of the efforts of Judge Finn and dealing with the insurance companies," Mezzetti said.

Mezzetti said confidentiality rules prohibit him from revealing how much the plaintiffs - 11 men and four women who are now in their early-to-mid 40s- will each receive under the settlement.

Besides Pritchard, who died in 1988 before most of the allegations against him surfaced, other former priests who were named in the lawsuits include three who served in the San Jose-area during the 1970s - Rev. Leonel Noia, Rev. Arthur Harrison and the Rev. Gregory Ingels, according to Maurice Healy, a spokesman for the archdiocese.

Ingels was an expert on church law who co-authored a document on dealing with sexually abusive priests and served as a priest at St. Bartholomew Church in San Mateo, Calif., until 2003. Harrison was a former pastor at several parishes in Santa Clara and Marin counties before he retired.

Noia served as pastor at St. Patricks parish in San Jose, where he endeared himself to children with an anti-authority attitude that included distributing marijuana and alcohol to minors, Mezzetti said.

All 15 claims were brought to court as the result of a 2001 state law that extended the statute of limitations for lawsuits to hold the church responsible for molestations that occurred in the past.

Ruling in the first case to go to trial since the statute of limitations was lifted, a San Francisco jury in March found the archdiocese liable for the suffering a 47-year-old man endured after being abuse by Rev. Pritchard as a boy.

Rick Simons, an attorney whose firm is representing plaintiffs in 20 of the remaining cases against the San Francisco archdiocese, said he did not know what the settlements might mean for his clients. The next trial, set for July 11, is the first of three more scheduled back-to-back involving allegations against Pritchard, Simons said.

"Both the lawyers and the court-appointed mediator deserve some credit for bringing to, at least for those particular victims, some degree of closure," Simons said. "I'm just as hopeful those same lawyers will do the same for the rest of the victims in San Francisco, but I ain't counting on it."