Albany Diocese Agrees to $8M Settlement on Eve of Sex Abuse Trial

Payout heads off trial that would have focused on ex-Bishop Howard J. Hubbard’s coverup of allegations against priests who victimized children.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany has agreed to an $8 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by a man who had said he was molested hundreds of times as a child by a former high-ranking priest who ultimately admitted sexually abusing young boys for years.

The deal was finalized Thursday, four days before the religious organization’s cover-up of the sexual abuse of children by priests and others was expected to be laid bare in what would have been the diocese’s first trial as a defendant in a case filed under New York’s Child Victims Act.

The case is one of seven child sexual abuse lawsuits filed against the diocese that a federal judge in March ruled would be allowed to go to trial — part of an effort to spur mediation in the diocese’s languishing bankruptcy case.

That decision by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert E. Littlefield Jr. came after attorneys for the hundreds of alleged victims with claims against the diocese had asserted that the settlement efforts had stalled, in part, because they needed trial verdicts to establish a more accurate picture of how much the victims should be compensated. The diocese’s insurance carriers have had a significant stake in those negotiations.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys said that several other cases, which were settled as the diocese threatened to file for bankruptcy more than two years ago, did not establish the benchmark needed to steer the mediation. Some of those plaintiffs, many of whom were aging or in poor health, had accepted reduced settlements out of fear they would otherwise get nothing.

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