€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.