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Cardinal Dolan’s newly announced Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program is a major step forward in promoting the healing of victim-survivors of sexual abuse as minors by clergy of the archdiocese.
We pray it will help bring healing in the lives of those victims and guide the archdiocese as it seeks to move ahead in a spirit of reconciliation and mercy.
Indeed, it is fitting that the program was announced during the Jubilee Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis.
With the compensation program, which is completely voluntary, the archdiocese has already begun reaching out to victims who previously reported that they were abused by a priest or deacon of the archdiocese.
If they’re found to be eligible and choose to participate, they will be offered compensation based on an independent administrator’s review of their individual situation.
There’s also a procedure for persons bringing forth new allegations.
Nearly 200 individuals have reported allegations of abuse by about 40 members of the archdiocesan clergy in years past; about 30 people have previously received compensation from the archdiocese.
It’s a sign of progress, though, that no allegations of new abuse have been reported in the last 15 years, as Cardinal Dolan indicated at the news conference announcing the program, and we hope that safeguards and policies now in place will keep it that way.
As for the reconciliation and compensation program announced last week, we applaud the trust that Cardinal Dolan has placed in the process—especially given that the archdiocese has agreed to accept the decision of the administrator regarding who is eligible and the level of compensation victims are offered.
We applaud, as well, the cardinal’s choice of administrator: the nationally recognized mediator Kenneth Feinberg, who is best known as the special master of the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. A three-person oversight committee whose members include former New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly will review Feinberg’s decisions, but will not have power to overturn them.
And lest anyone worry about money being diverted from their parish collection baskets or from other archdiocesan fund-raising efforts to make payments to victim-survivors, they can put that worry aside.
The archdiocese will fund the compensation payments the way most of us do when faced with an extraordinary expense.
“We’ll borrow the money,” the cardinal said.
At a news conference announcing the program, Cardinal Dolan described his motive in organizing it as a further step in efforts to reform and renew the Church as it moves beyond the clergy sexual abuse crisis that burst into public view two decades ago.
Certainly, much has been accomplished since the U.S. bishops addressed the crisis in their 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
Other dioceses have set up compensation programs similar to the one being introduced here, including one in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee that was instituted when Cardinal Dolan was archbishop there, and one set up a decade ago in the Diocese of Albany.
But there’s an important difference.
The Archdiocese of New York program is unique in that it’s completely independent. There are no archdiocesan employees or agents serving with Feinberg or with the oversight committee.
Feinberg will work with his associate Camille Biros, and the oversight committee members, besides Kelly, are U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska and Dr. Jeanette Cueva, M.D., an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University.
That’s a pretty powerful mix, and we hope it goes a long way toward healing the deep scars that remain among victim-survivors, a group that Cardinal Dolan describes as “members of the Church’s family.”
That they are. And they deserve our support.
