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The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County, California yesterday formally approved a record settlement of $100 million to 90 victims of sexual abuse by priests. In addition to an average payment of $1.1 million per victim, the diocese has agreed to make public confidential personnel files, and Orange County Bishop Tod D. Brown has agreed to personally apologize to each of the alleged victims, according to the Associated Press. However, under the terms of the settlement, the diocese itself is not admitting to any legal liability, the Los Angeles Times reports.

“I hope that what we have done – the changes we have made in our policies and our personnel practices – will guarantee that, as much as humanly possible, these things will never happen again,” said Brown, according to the Times.

The claims of abuse in the lawsuits go back at least 40 years and involve 22 priests, none of whom are still working today. There are nearly 800 lawsuits pending in California, including 540 against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle on Friday settled for $1.8 million a lawsuit brought by 12 people who alleged they were sexually abused by priests. Three other people claiming they were sexually abused are still in negotiations with the Archdiocese, according to the Associated Press. Though most of the claims were brought against a priest who is barred from ministry, at least one claim involved a priest named David Jaeger, who admitted to inappropriately touching 10 minors at a Catholic youth camp in 1970s, according to the Seattle Times. He is on administrative leave while the Vatican decides whether he can remain in ministry. Meanwhile, a task force set up to examine charges of priest sex abuse in Seattle has been effectively disbanded, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The task force had been criticizing Archbishop Alex Brunett for claiming that priest sex abuse is a thing of the past and that priests at the Archdiocese are unlikely to commit such abuse in the future. In addition, Brunett has refused to make public the names of accused priests, and he tried to water down a report produced by the task force, only publishing it after the members threatened to quit, the Post-Intelligencer reports. “Many victims do not come forward until priests’ names are released, and for the good of all the Catholic Church, it’s better that these names be revealed,” Terrence Carroll, chair of the task force, told the Post-Intelligencer. “This board is begging the Archbishop to do what he promised – lay everything out and have no more secrets – and that’s what he’s betraying” said Sue Alfieri, a task force member, according to the Post-Intelligencer.

A California state government oversight panel released a study on Wednesday showing that despite the fact that there are five times the number of women in the California prison system (some 22,000) than there were two decades ago, female prisoners are still subject to policies and practices that are designed for male prisoners who are generally serving time for much more violent crimes. Because of this, women who leave prison are less equipped to find a job, housing, or counseling for the common problem of drug addiction. Because of the failures of the prison system, nearly half of female parolees violate the terms of their parole and are placed back in prison, according to the report, titled Breaking the Barriers for Women on Parole. In California, every prisoner is automatically put on parole at the end of their sentence. Some 64 percent of women prisoners are single mothers of minors. Their children are also five to six times more likely to be imprisoned than their peers. According to the report, the average female inmate was a victim of physical or sexual abuse as a young woman, has a drug addiction, and was incarcerated for narcotic use or for stealing in order to buy narcotics. Terry Thornton, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections, told the Los Angeles Times that prison officials are in agreement with the report’s findings, and that the department is interested in tailoring programs to meet the needs of women in prison. The department has also applied for a federal grant to fund the study of successful programs in other states that have reduced the rate of re-imprisonment. In November, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics announced that the number of women prisoners in state and federal prisons is at an all time high and growing at nearly twice the pace of male prisoners. There were over 100,000 women in state and federal prisons for the first time in 2003. DONATE to Ms. magazine’s Women in Prison Program, which provides magazines to women in prison across the country JOIN the Ms. community and receive one year of the premier feminist publication

Two major victim advocacy groups are urging US bishops to reinstate full independent audits of Catholic dioceses across the country to ensure that the Church is fully addressing the priest sex abuse scandal. In November, the bishops voted to cut back the number of dioceses that would have on-site visits by retired FBI agents. Dioceses that were found fully compliant twice would only be required to fill out questionnaires, according to the Associated Press. In a letter sent to the National Review Board, the lay panel created by the bishops to monitor the situation, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said that this decision is “a nearly total reversal of what bishops pledged in Dallas in June of 2002, of what took place in 2003 and 2004, and of the bare minimum steps of what Catholics and victims deserve and have come to expect.” The letter was signed by Barbara Blaine, SNAP’s president and founder, and David Chlohessy, SNAP’s national director. Voices of the Faithful sent a similar letter, saying, “Trust is on the line. If the bishops do not work to restore it, the Church will remain in jeopardy in the United States.” Without on-site audits, wrote Blaine and Chlohessy, “we’re basically back to square one, where we have no choice but to trust in many of the same men whose repeated deceit and misconduct led to the molestation of thousands of innocent Catholic youngsters.” According to the Associated Press, the bishops say they are only trying to make the audit process more efficient and less costly.

Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz released a report last week on his investigation into the Air Force Academy’s sexual assault scandal that found a succession of commanders responsible for the lack of attention paid to the rampant occurrences of rape and sexual abuse. Over the past decade, there have been 142 instances of sexual assault reported, but little action was taken by leadership until the widespread problem of sexual abuse was publicly exposed. Eight Air Force officials and two Air Force legal officers were reported to have shared the responsibility for failing to acknowledge the climate of hostility toward women at the Academy and for allowing a culture which tolerated the sexual abuse of female cadets to prevail, according to Reuters. This finding is similar to the results of a report released by a civilian commission last year. However, according to the Associated Press, members of the civilian commission have responded to the Inspector General’s report, maintaining that they believe three additional officials formerly of the Academy deserve blame, and that one of the eight Air Force officials blasted in the Pentagon report should not have been. David Chu, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said last week in a Pentagon briefing that a policy guaranteeing the confidentiality of victims who report an assault or rage will be put in place quickly, the New York Times reports. Investigations over the past two years seem to indicate that many female cadets feared being ostracized or punished if they came forward to report sexual abuse. A course of discipline for the officials blamed is as yet unknown, and many of them have already retired from the Air Force. Chu noted in the Pentagon briefing that all of the Academy’s leadership has been replaced since the scandal broke.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County, California, settled for a record $100 million a lawsuit brought by 87 people who alleged they were sexually abused by priests and lay employees. “I believe that the victims will be fairly compensated, and, at the same time, that our diocese will be able to continue its service,” said Bishop Todd R. Brown, according to the Los Angeles Times. “But this settlement involved millions of dollars, and it will be very painful for us to deal with.” However, the diocese does not expect to have to file for bankruptcy, as three other dioceses across the country have done so far (Tucson, AZ; Portland, OR; and Spokane, WA), according to the Washington Post. The claims of abuse in the lawsuit go back at least 40 years and involve 22 priests, none of whom are still working today, the Post reports. Bishop Brown won praise from victims and victim advocates for his determination to resolve the lawsuit quickly. Terrie Light, Northern California director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), told the San Francisco Chronicle, “Finally, some of these people will have some kind of justice. It has been put off for so long.” There are nearly 800 lawsuits pending in California, including 540 against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Women on Death Row endure more hardships than their male counterparts, according to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The report, titled The Forgotten Population: A Look at Death Row in the United States Through the Experiences of Women, studied 66 women, ten of whom have already been executed, and found that because there are so few women living on Death Row, they are more likely to experience isolation, which can bring about or exacerbate mental illness. They are also more likely to experience sexual harassment from prison guards and staff who watch them as they dress, wash, and go to the bathroom. One in five of the women studied had been sexually assaulted while in prison. Disturbingly, many of the women were sentenced to death for crimes that generally do not result in the death penalty for men, according to the ACLU study. The report also found many similarities between the women’s lives before they were incarcerated and the type of crimes they committed. Over half the women had experienced ongoing abuse from either family members or partners. Half of the women studied had at least one accomplice in their crime and, in most of these cases, the accomplice received a lesser sentence despite appearing to be equally culpable, the ACLU reports. Additionally, nearly two-thirds of the women on Death Row were convicted of killing people they knew, such as a family member. “This gives further documentation to the intersections between state violence and domestic violence,” Andrea Bible, project coordinator for Free Battered Women, told Women’s eNews. “This report was done to bring to light the conditions of women on death row and to note that abuse has been a factor in most of the cases.” In addition to these problems, the women were also found to experience many of the same difficulties that men on Death Row experience; for example, inadequate defense attorneys and addiction to drugs or alcohol. The study offered 13 recommendations, including creating programs to provide defense attorneys with training to investigate prior domestic abuse and introduce the issue at trial, altering prison staff policies to prevent sexual harassment and assault, giving women prisoners who are sexually abused access to the court, and integrating female Death Row inmates into other women’s prisons to prevent isolation. DONATE to Ms. magazine’s Women in Prison Program, which provides magazines to women in prison across the country JOIN the Ms. community and receive one year of the premier feminist publication

The Assistant US Attorney General argued before the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals to have the verdict of a lower court overruled in order to protect the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). The FACE Act prohibits not only violence against abortion providers, clinic staff, patients, and volunteers, but also threats of violence. Last year, US District Court Judge Kenneth Hoyt ruled that the federal FACE Act was unconstitutional because it went beyond Congress’s constitutional duty to regulate interstate commerce. Six Circuit Courts of Appeals have already ruled the FACE Act is constitutional. In doing so, Judge Hoyt dismissed charges against Frank Bird, who allegedly crashed a van through the doors of the Houston Planned Parenthood Clinic in March of 2003. Judge Hoyt based his ruling on a 2000 US Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Violence Against Women Act that found that Congress had no authority to “regulate non-economic, violent criminal conduct based solely on that conduct’s aggregate effect on interstate commerce.” Bird’s public defender, Brent Newton, maintained that this case is not about abortion rights, but rather about state rights, reports Kaisernetwork.org. Assistant US Attorney General Peter Keisler argued that such violence does indeed affect an interstate marketÑthat of providing abortions and resources for women’s reproductive health, according to the Associated Press. A third-party brief filed by Legal Momentum, formerly the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, concurred, stating that a local attack in one state can intimidate abortion providers all across the country, dissuading them from offering abortions, or leading them to allocate more funds to the security of their clinic, the Associated Press reports. Keisler also cited several prior court rulings which set a precedent for Congress to regulate local activities if they have a larger national effect. One of the cases actually involved a prior attack by Bird, when he had been convicted of throwing a bottle at the windshield of a doctor who worked at another clinic. For that crime, the Associated Press reports that Bird served a year in a federal prison and paid $820.67 in restitution. The court did not indicate when it would issue a ruling. DONATE to protect the right to a safe, legal abortion

On October 7, 2004, the Feminist News ran a story that included an unsubstantiated statement alleging that members of Operation Rescue West “have been found guilty of murdering abortion providers and clinic staff.” As soon as we became aware of this error, which we regret, we removed the story from the Feminist News Archives and we are posting this correction on the Feminist News.