Talk:Settlements and bankruptcies in Catholic sex abuse cases

Table needs work
The table here could use some work -- it's really not very readable. Main problem is the comments column often contains a lengthy paragraph of text, but the column is so narrow that this stretches the whole table out vertically. Almost all the other columns have only a single line of text, this column can have 25 or so lines.

Making this column wider might help the problem. Could we combine the comments and notes columns, just putting the notes at the end of the comments text? And I believe the column width is set by the width of the heading, so columns Compensation Payment and Number of Recipients have a heading that is much wider than the usual contents. Can we shorten these headings, and thus narrow these columns? Maybe use Amount and # of Victims? T-bonham (talk) 03:12, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

What is the rationale for having this article?
This article repeats information that is presented in toto in both Catholic sex abuse cases and Roman Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States.

I would propose to merge this information into Roman Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States except that it's already there.

This kind of forking is not useful unless it is in furtherance of style.

If this article is to stay, we should summarize the information in Catholic sex abuse cases and Roman Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States so that we don't have the same information in three different places. (P.S. I already tried doing something like that except that the owner of that article objected.)

My personal preference would be to merge this to Roman Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States and then delete the article.

--Richard (talk) 20:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh sorry... I hadn't seen that ADM attempted to remove the information from Catholic sex abuse cases but had that edit reverted by User:Kasaalan.  I will attempt to address the problem from there first.


 * In the meantime, we should discuss whether this article should stay or be incorporated into Roman Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States.  After all, all the information is about settlements and bankruptcies in the U.S.


 * --Richard (talk) 21:14, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The information about how much money was involved seemed a tad too explicit, in my opinion, to be included in the main article. I felt that it was an important aspect of the abuse scandals, but that it would be better explained in a separate entry, because it deals primarily with financial issues, instead of actual abuse by clergymen and the protection they obtained from many of their fellow bishops. ADM (talk) 01:49, 1 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The prepared chart of payouts repeatedly leaves out the settlement paid by the Jesuits in Sacramento to Will Green for $100,000, as reported in the earlier extensive Wikipedia article before ADM or someone's editing, and by the Sacramento Bee. In addition the case brought to light the "first" known case of ritual abuse of altar boys by two twin brother priests.  I have tried to amend the chart to reflect this, unsuccessfully. Please assist.

[User:Willjgreen|Willjgreen]] (talk) 21:48, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * September 2007|| Diocese of Sacramento || Arthur Falvey || $100,000 || 1 || Falvey was the twin brother of accussed Los Angeles priest Mark Falvey


 * Will, I am opposed to providing the amount paid to settle individual cases. It is reasonable to provide aggregate sums totalled over a large number of cases but, given the number of cases (thousands), it is (IMO) inappropriate to include payments to individual plaintiffs.  --Richard (talk) 22:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Question: What is the legal status of the Roman Catholic Church in the US?
Sorry I am by no means an expert in these matters and I do not live in the US but it intuitively seems strange to me that a part of the Catholic church can file for bankruptcy. If Dioceses can file for bankruptcy, then I guess that means that they are seperate legal entities, right? How is it that they have become separate legal entities? Are they incorporated, and did they have to file an act of incorporation just like a private for-profit enterprise? If yes, then are they listed as for-profit enterprises in the US and do they have to pay taxes, just like any other for-profit enterprise? Can someone please clarify, Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.233.140.166 (talk) 01:25, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Page only refers to USA
The information on this page relates only to the USA. Either the page should be expanded to cover the whole world (a lot of work for someone) or it should be renamed, with USA in the title. Obscurasky (talk) 09:03, 14 December 2009 (UTC)


 * For a diocese to go bankrupt is very rare and appears to be a unique feature of American law. Unless anyone can demonstrate that diocesan bankruptices are not peculiar to the legal practice of the United States or to British common law, I don't think the article really needs to be renamed. For instance, in other countries like France, Israel, Mexico or Turkey, Catholic dioceses have a rather different type of legal personality which would make it practically impossible for them to attempt bankruptcy. Besides, the recent abuse scandal was mostly limited to English-speaking countries and it is difficult to imagine what would have happened if a greater number of non-Anglophone jurisdictions had been involved in dealing with the affairs. ADM (talk) 11:38, 27 January 2010 (UTC)


 * But the title is Settlements and bankruptcies in Catholic sex abuse cases. Bankruptcies may be limited to the US, but settlements have been made in many countries. Obscurasky (talk) 14:11, 27 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what your point is. It seems to me that it could be addressed by expanding the article to include settlements made in countries other than the U.S.  That seems more valuable than restricting this article to the U.S. by changing the title. --Richard S (talk) 18:40, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The basic data in one place
Abuse-driven U.S. diocese bankruptcies & payouts – out of 197 dioceses – since 2002:

1)	Portland, OR (2004) – $75 million 2)	Tucson, AZ (2004) – $22 million 3)	Spokane, WA (2004) – $48 million	4)	Davenport, IA (2006) – $37 million 5)	San Diego, CA (2007) – $198 million 6)	Fairbanks, AK (2008) – $10 million 7)	Oregon Province of the Jesuits (2009) – $166 million 8)	Wilmington, DE (2009) – $77 million 9)	Milwaukee, WI (2011) – $21 million 10)	Congregation of the Christian Brothers (2011) – $17 million 11)	Gallup, NM (2013) – $22 million 12)	Stockton, CA (2014) – $15 million 13)	Helena, MT (2014) – $20 million 14)	St. Paul/Minneapolis, MN (2015) – $210 million 15)	Duluth, MN (2015) – (ongoing) 16)	New Ulm, MN (2017) – (ongoing) 17)	Great Falls-Billings, MT (2017) – $20 million 18)	Crosier Fathers and Brothers, MN & AZ (2017) – $25 million 19)	St. Cloud, MN (2018) – (announced ongoing intent without yet filing; list of likely abusers …dozens, over years, in a total population of only 67,000) 20)	Territory of Guam (2018) – (ongoing) 21)	Winona-Rochester, MN (2018) – (ongoing) 22)	Santa Fe, NM (2018) – (ongoing) 23)	Rochester, NY (2019) – (ongoing) --67.48.200.162 (talk) 22:14, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Oakland Diocese
"Oakland Diocese files for bankruptcy following sexual abuse lawsuits". Veverve (talk) 20:06, 21 July 2023 (UTC)