In a nearly unanimous vote, hundreds of victims of child sexual abuse by clergy and other church creditors approved a $230m bankruptcy settlement with the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans by a midnight deadline on Thursday.
The archdiocese reported in a court filing on Thursday morning that the deal was accepted by a staggering 99.63% of creditors, excluding a small group of bond investors who voted against it while suing the church and alleging it committed securities fraud.
The church did not report the total number of votes cast but said “hundreds of survivors voted overwhelmingly to accept the plan”, which will dole out payments to victims of abuse based on points assigned for the severity and effects of the abuse – and includes agreements to release files on abusive priests and deacons and set up stronger protections for children and vulnerable adults.
The church has previously reported that more than 600 abuse survivors have filed eligible claims, but it is rare for every claimant to vote on a final settlement plan. Still, even if all of them cast votes, a 99.63% approval rate would mean only two of them voted against the plan.
The plan needed support from at least two-thirds of those voting to be approved. Initially, attorneys representing a large block of abuse survivors said they were going to vote against a plan that did not guarantee about $50m of the $230m that was tied to the pending sale of apartment complexes the church owns.
Those survivors’ attorneys backed the plan when it was amended to guarantee the $50m.
The results of the vote were not supposed to be announced until 6 November, but the church noted the overwhelming percentage while arguing against a legal maneuver by bondholders who alleged fraud after the church withheld interest payments it had promised to investors when they bought the church’s bonded indebtedness.
The judge overseeing the archdiocese’s bankruptcy, Meredith Grabill, had not approved the settlement Thursday. A hearing about whether to confirm the settlement was tentatively scheduled to begin on 12 November.
New Orleans’s archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2020 amid the fallout of the worldwide church’s clergy molestation scandal. It is just one of more than 40 US Catholic dioceses or religious orders to have filed for bankruptcy, with 28 of those cases having concluded as of Thursday, according to information from Penn State University’s law school.
At the time his archdiocese filed for bankruptcy, Archbishop Gregory Aymond issued a letter to the Vatican indicating his belief that his administration could resolve the proceeding for about $7m, including compensation for abuse victims.
Yet the archdiocese subsequently spent more than seven times that amount – about $50m – on legal fees alone that are in addition to the compensation for abuse victims.
The higher settlement amount materialized after Louisiana’s state legislature in 2021 removed a prohibition against molestation survivors of decades-old abuse being able to pursue civil damages in court. The state’s supreme court upheld the law as constitutional in June 2024, defying a request for it to be struck down that was pursued by the Catholic diocese of Lafayette.
The case has seen some unusually acrimonious moments.
Notably, in 2022, at the archdiocese’s urging, Grabill fined clergy abuse survivors’ attorney Richard Trahant and expelled four of his clients from a committee that was about to start negotiating a settlement. Grabill made that move after Trahant took steps that led a high school to learn that its chaplain was an admitted child molester, leading to the priest’s removal from its campus.
Grabill ruled that Trahant’s actions violated secrecy orders governing the bankruptcy, prompting the attorney to file an appeal that remained unresolved as of Thursday.
In a statement, Trahant said he, his colleagues and his clients were nonetheless able to have a significant hand in the deal approved Thursday, though “there is no amount of money that could ever make these survivors whole”.
Meanwhile, during the course of the bankruptcy, WWL Louisiana and the Guardian were able to expose how – under the leadership of Aymond and his three predecessors – the New Orleans church shielded admitted serial child molester and retired priest Lawrence Hecker from law enforcement for decades. Hecker was charged after the outlets’ reporting, pleaded guilty in criminal court in December 2024 to child rape and soon died in prison aged 93.
The investigation into Hecker morphed into a wider inquiry over whether the archdiocese ran a child sex-trafficking ring responsible for the “widespread … abuse of minors dating back decades” that was kept under cover “and not reported” to authorities, said sworn police statements.
As of Thursday, none of Hecker’s superiors had been charged with a crime in the case connected to him.
In September, Pope Leo XIV named the eventual successor to Aymond, who has been New Orleans’s archbishop since 2009. James Checchio – the bishop in Metuchen, New Jersey, since 2016 – is expected to administer alongside Aymond and then succeed him when he retires in the coming months, according to Leo, the first US-born pope in history.
• In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453 or visit their website for more resources and to report child abuse or DM for help. For adult survivors of child abuse, help is available at ascasupport.org. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International
