A bankruptcy filing by the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington has angered dozens of alledged sex abuse victims hoping to seek compensation, according to an attorney representing a majority of the victims.
Thomas Neuberger, an attorney representing 88 alleged victims in Delaware, described the bankruptcy filing as a “desperate effort to hide the truth from the public and conceal the thousands of pages of scandalous documents and stunning testimony about the rape and sexual abuse of young children by its priest.”
The diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late Sunday after settlement negotiations failed with 13 alleged victims, including eight whose trials were scheduled to begin. More than 100 other alleged victims were pursuing compensation outside the courts.
Most Reverend W. Francis Malooly said the bankruptcy was the best way to ensure reconciliation and compensation for all victims of clergy sexual abuse in the diocese, the bishop said Monday.
“It was clear to us in our negotiations that the amount of money that was being sought by the early victims and the finite amount that we had ... was not going to work,'' the Most Rev. W. Francis Malooly, the bishop of the diocese, said at a news conference Monday.
Malooly said an excessive settlement or jury award for a handful of victims who would receive “a much bigger piece of the pie” would have been unfair for other victims.
The bankruptcy filing came on the eve of a trial scheduled to begin Monday that would have been the first under a Delaware law that created a two-year “lookback” window allowing claims of abuse to be brought even if the statute of limitations had expired.
More than 100 lawsuits were filed before the window closed this summer, with four being settled.
The first eight cases scheduled for trial involve lawsuits against former priest Francis DeLuca. DeLuca served as a priest for 35 years but was defrocked last summer after having been jailed in 2007 in New York for repeatedly molesting his grandnephew.
He is one of about 20 priests against whom the diocese has substantiated allegations of child sexual abuse.
