{"id":6150,"date":"2006-09-01T13:17:26","date_gmt":"2006-09-01T13:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/settlement.html"},"modified":"2006-09-01T13:17:26","modified_gmt":"2006-09-01T13:17:26","slug":"settlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/settlement.html","title":{"rendered":"Settlement?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/story\/index.aspx?id=489857\">Archdiocese of Milwaukee case:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Peter Isely, Midwest director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, saw the California settlements as a way to avoid having retired Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland have to reveal more details about his actions and those of other church officials in depositions or courtroom testimony if the cases had gone to trial. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;Courts in Wisconsin are helping the bishops of Wisconsin to completely evade their liability and responsibility for the rape of children in our state,&quot; Isely said. <\/p>\n<p>In the case that was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Eric Paino alleged that Widera molested him in California in 1985, when Paino was 8 years old. Widera, who later left the priesthood, committed suicide in 2003 by jumping from the balcony of a Mexican hotel as police were closing in on him after an extensive manhunt. <\/p>\n<p>Widera had been on the run for nearly a year. He was facing four counts of enticing a child and five counts of indecent behavior with a child in Wisconsin\u2019s Walworth County. And in California\u2019s Orange County, prosecutors had issued a warrant for his arrest on 33 felony counts of child molestation. <\/p>\n<p>Widera served in four parishes in the archdiocese here in the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1973, while an associate pastor at a Port Washington church, he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in Fredonia and was sentenced to three years\u2019 probation. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/news\/2005_05_18_Srisavasdi_SecondChances.htm#widera\">More on Widera at the Bishop Accountability Website<\/a>&nbsp; &#8211; and just ponder that for a moment. <em>Convicted <\/em>in 1973 of molestation&#8230;allowed to continue in &quot;ministry.&quot; <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.archmil.org\/news\/ShowNews.asp?ID=2617\">The Archdiocesan website has more specifics on the settlement:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has reached resolution with all 10 victims\/survivors of clergy sexual abuse in California. The global agreement, which will pay the 10 victims\/survivors $16.65 million, resulted from a two-day court-ordered mediation. Under the agreement, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee will pay $8.25 million \u2013 approximately half the amount \u2013 with the remainder being paid by insurance. <\/p>\n<p>The archdiocese\u2019s financial responsibility will be fulfilled through current financial holdings, including properties owned by the archdiocese and the liquidation of some short- and long-term investments. Included in this will be the proceeds from the sale of the Archbishop Cousins Catholic Center, which were initially intended to benefit Saint Francis Seminary and the future formation of men preparing for priesthood, and other property that had been designated for future pastoral, educational or charitable ministries of the Church. This agreement will not affect any parish property. Archdiocesan officials are currently structuring how the payment will be made. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/terrenceberres.com\/2006\/09\/agreement-reached-on-sexual-abuse.html\">Thanks to Terrence Berres, proprieter of the excellent and pithy Provincial Emails blog<\/a> for pointing this out.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.archmil.org\/news\/ShowNews.asp?ID=2617\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Archdiocese of Milwaukee case: Peter Isely, Midwest director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, saw the California settlements as a way to avoid having retired Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland have to reveal more details about his actions and those of other church officials in depositions or courtroom testimony if the cases had&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Settlement? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/settlement.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Settlement? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Archdiocese of Milwaukee case: Peter Isely, Midwest director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, saw the California settlements as a way to avoid having retired Archbishop Rembert G. 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Weakland have to reveal more details about his actions and those of other church officials in depositions or courtroom testimony if the cases had&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/settlement.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-09-01T13:17:26+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/settlement.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/settlement.html","name":"Settlement? - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-09-01T13:17:26+00:00","dateModified":"2006-09-01T13:17:26+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/settlement.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/settlement.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/settlement.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Settlement?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}