The San Francisco Archdiocese will pay out nearly $400 million to survivors of clergy sexual abuse, encompassing 70 years of children falling prey to priests, lawyers announced Monday.
The settlement sets up a trust to compensate 530 survivors of childhood sexual abuse — all of whom are now adults — and establishes extensive child protection reforms to protect minors from abuse, lawyers for the victims said.
The deal comes three years after the archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy amid a growing number of lawsuits alleging abuse.
Jeff Anderson, one of the lead attorneys for survivors, said the $395 million settlement is “less than a full measure of accountability” but is “monumental” in terms of the conditions it places on the archdiocese, including a 14-point plan for protecting children.
Anderson, who has fought in the courts for decades for priest accountability, said “This is unprecedented, and this gives me hope.”
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone called the settlement “a path toward fair compensation for survivors who have borne the weight of this abuse for a lifetime.
In a statement, he said “While the vast majority of sexual abuse allegations associated with bankruptcy were from many decades ago, we accept full responsibility for what happened, and I sincerely apologize to all those who have been harmed. With stringent preventative measures and training now in place for decades, the hope is that this proposal will allow us collectively to move forward by continuing the important ministries to the faithful and community members that rely on our services and charity.”
The civil lawsuits were enabled by California law AB218, which went into effect in 2020, and lifted a statute of limitations and allowed for triple damages against institutions that covered up sexual abuse.
Anderson said the amount paid to survivors could rise as part of the settlement; the Archdiocese agreed to assign its rights under its insurance policies for the survivors to recover additional damages.
In addition to the settlement, the Archdiocese is required to maintain and publicly disclose a comprehensive, up-to-date list of all accused clergy, including detailed allegations and investigation outcomes. The Archdiocese must also establish an independently managed, publicly available record documenting the Church’s knowledge of abuse allegations and what actions or inactions were taken and when.
Survivors have fought for a full public account of priests, with San Francisco being the only diocese in the state that has not released such a list of clergy abuse offenders.
As part of this record, associated documents will be digitized and made available to ensure complete transparency. The agreement also mandates a legally enforceable whistleblower protection policy, a comprehensive Survivor Bill of Rights, anonymous online reporting, and a prohibition on confidentiality agreements that silence survivors.
Critically, the Archdiocese is prohibited from lobbying against abuse laws that could weaken mandatory reporting requirements.
“This settlement represents an important step toward accountability, but it should not be mistaken for a measure of the harm these survivors endured,” said Neda Lotfi, another of the survivors’ lawyers.
The agreement releases all survivors from any prior non-disclosure agreements and forbids any future such secrecy agreements and prohibits any adult-to-minor digital communications in the Archdiocese.
In 2024, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid $880 million to hundreds of victims of clergy sexual abuse dating back decades. The settlement with 1,353 survivors was the biggest single child sex abuse settlement with a Catholic archdiocese, according to experts. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has previously paid $740 million to victims, bringing the payout to survivors to more than $1.5 billion.
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