For a teacher from Wisconsin it is $25,000.
The man, who wrote a letter to the bishop in the Diocese Superior some 40 years after Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy had sexually abused him, asked a compensation of $25,000 from the Church:
“so I can forgive you and not be angry when I see the church.”
The man served as an alter boy at a church in Boulder Junction, in the Northwoods of Wisconsin when he encountered Father Murphy. He wrote the letter at age 52, in 2002, four years after the death of Murphy.
Only governments and laywers try to convert pain (emotional or physical) to dollar, but they do it and the amount is in any way bigger than nothing.
The $25,000 that the teacher asked for is nearly half of what the crime victim compensation program of Wisconsin offers to victims. The program pays up to $40,000 for expenses for out-of-pocket costs resulting from a violent crime including:
♦ Medical expenses
♦ Lost wages/support
♦ Mental health counseling
♦ Replacement services: homemaker and childcare services
♦ Attorney fees: up to 10 percent of award
Bringing a civil lawsuit against the institution responsible for the criminal is a costly and riskier way to proceed but in the world of money risk always equals to better earnings. In the case of the Diocese of Wilmington that serves about 230,000 Catholics in Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a sex abuse case meant bankruptcy in October 2009.
Since 2002, the Diocese of Wilmington has settled eight cases for an average of about $780,000 each.
