Victims of Boarding School Abuse Start Receiving Settlement ChecksIndian Country Today Media Network, August 22, 2011
More than 500 victims of child sexual abuse by Catholic Church officials in the 1960s and 1970s have begun receiving checks from the $166 million settlement with Northwest Jesuits, reported Shane Iverson for KYUK in Bethel.
About 200 of them were from Alaska, primarily the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta of Western Alaska and the greater Northwest Region. The other approximately 300 survived the system in Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington, Iverson said.
A two-person panel selected by committee will determine how much of the settlement each victim will receive. Individual payment amounts will not be made public information, said attorney Ken Roosa, reported the Anchorage Daily News.
The payout is one of the largest in the Catholic abuse scandal that has rocked Natives across the nation, reported KYUK.
“For many of [the victims], it’s an opportunity to move on, to try to piece their lives back together,” Roosa said. “They will have some compensation, [but] not nearly in any sense what their claims were really worth.”
