The troop-sponsoring organizations and settling insurers also would be released from further liability in exchange for their contributions to the fund.
Bishop John Schol, a United Methodist leader who oversees eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey for the denomination and has been involved in the bankruptcy negotiations, became emotional Friday when testifying about the Methodist settlement.
Schol said the Methodists’ goals included acknowledging and understanding the harm that abuse survivors have suffered, ensuring that their voices were heard, implementing policies to prevent future abuse and providing compensation.
“We are sorry for what has happened to survivors throughout this time, and even this process,” he said.
“We always wanted to make sure that the survivors were not a number,” Schol added as his voice began to break, “but that they were human beings, and that we would do everything we could to maintain the dignify of the survivors.”
Asked whether he thought the $30 million settlement was fair, Schol said there was nothing anybody could do for the survivors to make it fair. “All I can say is that we’ve done our best to work toward a just resolution,” he said.
All told, the compensation fund would total more than $2.6 billion, which would be the largest aggregate sexual abuse settlement in U.S. history. The average recovery per claimant, however, would be significantly less than in other settlements of sex abuse scandals involving large numbers of victims.
The BSA’s plan stills faces objections from several nonsettling insurance companies, as well as the U.S. bankruptcy trustee, who acts as a watchdog in such cases to ensure compliance with bankruptcy laws.
This article originally appeared here.
