Judge Confirms That KC Diocese Must Pay $1.1 Million in Breach of Contract Case
The Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese must pay the $1.1 million ordered by an arbitrator last spring for violating the terms of a 2008 settlement with priest sexual abuse victims, a judge has ruled.
Calling the award a “scathing indictment of the defendant,” Jackson County Circuit Judge Bryan Round said in his ruling that “there can be no doubt that the diocese, through its leadership and higher-level personnel, failed in numerous respects to abide by the terms” of the 2008 agreement. Those terms included immediately reporting any abuse or suspicion of abuse to law enforcement authorities — something the diocese failed to do in the child pornography case of the Rev. Shawn Ratigan in 2010.
Round issued the ruling late Wednesday, three weeks after hearing arguments in the case. The plaintiffs had asked him to confirm the arbitrator’s order, while the diocese had argued that it be vacated.
“The order is, once again, an indictment of the way the diocese has handled issues of childhood sexual abuse,” said Rebecca Randles, an attorney for the plaintiffs. She praised the plaintiffs for having “done so much to try to protect children from the kind of abuse they experienced.”
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