The Flawed System of Sexual Abuse Settlements, by Francis X. Maier

By Francis X. Maier, First Things,  July 4, 2025

There was a window from the late 1980s through the early 2000s when the sex abuse of minors seemed to be a predominantly Catholic Church problem. At least in the United States, that delusion is now dead. On June 17, the Wall Street Journal reported that sex abuse claims against the Boy Scouts of America, totaling some 60,000, now exceed $7 billion in value. This is more than double the financial resources allotted by the organization for compensating victims in its 2022 bankruptcy settlement. Even that figure may not be enough. Abuse survivors argue that abuse damages should be valued even higher, between $30 billion and $103 billion.

The Boy Scouts’ story follows a $4 billion abuse settlement—the largest in U.S. history—by Los Angeles County. Under a 2020 state law, the county’s money will go to nearly seven thousand survivors from decades of sexual and physical abuse at the county’s juvenile facilities. The settlement does not preclude similar lawsuits in the future by the abuse victims of other public institutions and schools. It also dwarfs the $1.5 billion paid out by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to victims of clergy abuse. …

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