“This is a breakthrough and powerful moment in time in getting justice for survivors,” said Jeff Anderson, the lawyer whose firm represented 145 people abused by Catholic clergy and staff in the Diocese of Winona-Rochester. They are now set to share $30 million, paid by the diocese’s largest insurer, United States Fire Insurance Company.
The abuse covered by the deal goes back to the early 1960s. Some survivors began filing claims against the diocese in the early 1980s. Anderson told MPR News the settlement felt like “closing a circle that began in 1982.”
Years of fighting the insurers
The flood of lawsuits pushed the diocese into bankruptcy in 2018. In 2021 it agreed to pay the same 145 survivors $28 million, but United States Fire contributed nothing to that agreement. Anderson accused that insurer and others of going to great lengths to avoid paying claims in cases like these.
What changed was the courtroom. Juries recently ruled in favor of three of the survivors, and United States Fire agreed to settle before another trial on the abuse cases, set to begin Sept. 28. Crum & Forster, the insurer’s parent company, did not respond to MPR News’ request for comment.
The three men who carried the fight to court were two who were abused by Fr. Joseph Cashman as students at Lourdes High School in Rochester in the 1970s, and a man who was 13 when a volunteer, Eugene Herbert, abused him in the early 1970s. Herbert was known as “Brother Gene” at St. Mary’s Parish and School.
Anderson said the outcome reaches beyond Minnesota. “Every insurance company in the country and every survivor with whom we’re working have been watching this case to see what would happen, and now that it’s happened, there is a real reckoning,” he said. In his view, a new precedent could change how such cases are tried.
Vicar General William Thompson told MPR News that with the insurer honoring its obligations, all future litigation stemming from the diocese’s bankruptcy has concluded. He said the diocese remains committed to its Safe Environment Program, which aims to protect children, vulnerable adults and young people in its parishes, schools and religious education classes. “All are invited to pray for the healing of those impacted by sexual abuse,” Thompson said.
