€30m payout to church sex abuse victims

Victims of a former Lutheran minister who sexually molested boys won a jury award of nearly €29.9m, bringing the total payout in the case to about €52.3m.

The case involving former minister Gerald Patrick Thomas Jr is the most serious to hit the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which has about five million members, and has drawn comparisons to the worst abuses committed during the Roman Catholic molestation crisis.

In addition to yesterday’s verdict in Marshall, Texas, a lawyer for the plaintiffs disclosed that separate settlements reached before the trial totalled €23.9m. The deals were struck with the Chicago-based denomination and the seminary in Columbus, Ohio, that Thomas attended.

The lawsuit charged that former Bishop Mark Herbener of the Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana Synod, and former bishop’s assistant Earl Eliason, ignored warnings about Thomas’s behaviour.

Thomas, minister of Marshall’s Good Shepherd Lutheran Church from 1997 until his arrest in 2001, was sentenced last year to 397 years in state prison for molesting boys.

The victims said the congregation was not warned about several incidents in which Thomas was accused of inappropriate behaviour.

Nine plaintiffs won awards in the lawsuit, ranging from €37,400 to €7.5m. “I find no reason the verdict should not be accepted,” said District Judge Bonnie Leggat. The earlier settlements included those nine victims plus five others.