Milwaukee Archdiocese to Pay Victims of Priest It Sent to O.C.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee agreed Friday to pay eight California victims of a former Orange County priest $13.3 million, ending litigation against the serial child molester who leapt to his death from a hotel balcony in Mexico rather than face charges in the United States.

Combined with an earlier settlement from the Diocese of Orange, the victims of the late Father Siegfried Widera received a total of $28 million, a record $3.6 million per plaintiff.

Widera was convicted of child molestation in Milwaukee in 1973, then sent to Orange County three years later. The Archdiocese of Milwaukee failed to disclose the conviction in a letter to Orange officials, saying Widera posed “no great risk.”

“Our hope, always, is to continue our progress in reaching resolution with anyone who was a victim of clergy sexual abuse,” said Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan in a statement Friday. “We believe this agreement brings closure to all the cases in California and, hopefully, provides healing for victims/survivors.”

One of Widera’s California victims, David Guerrero, said he was molested for years beginning when he was 8 in Anaheim. He said the settlements helped him overcome drug addiction, an eating disorder and sex addiction caused by the molestation.

“It’s like I got the money, but now I have to deal with all the wreckage of the past,” Guerrero said.

The settlement was hailed by lawyers for the California victims, along with Milwaukee’s decision to release many documents in the cases.

“It closes the book on their claims,” said Katherine K. Freberg, lead lawyer for the victims. “I hope that it’s a beacon of hope for other victims out there who are still fighting their legal battles.”

Some 560 claims against priests in Los Angeles remain to be resolved. The first is now scheduled for trial on Nov. 18.

For Widera’s victims, the settlement was bittersweet.

Three of his victims’ cases in Wisconsin were thrown out of court Wednesday, when a state appeals court ruled they had filed their claims too late.

The eight California victims had also filed claims long after the incidents. But the state Legislature recognized that many victims suppress memories of abuse and opened a legal window for filing older claims.

The lawsuits that were settled Friday had been pending in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Meanwhile, legislation to extend the ability to sue in Wisconsin is pending.

“It’s disconcerting for Catholics here to see millions of dollars sent to victims in California, while victims in Wisconsin receive no relief,” said Peter Isley, Midwestern head of the Milwaukee-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Most of Widera’s story has been well-documented. Church officials in Orange conceded that they accepted the Milwaukee priest into their diocese in 1976 despite a vague warning in a letter from then-Archbishop William E. Cousins of Milwaukee that in earlier years Widera had a “moral problem having to do with a boy in school.”

In fact, he had been convicted in 1973 of molesting a boy.

In 1985, after an allegation of sexual abuse in Orange County surfaced, church officials barred Widera from performing priestly duties.

He was then sent to a Catholic rehabilitation center in New Mexico for treatment, which he never completed.

He later became a Tucson businessman.

In 2002, when the church’s national sex abuse scandal exploded, other victims came forward, and authorities charged Widera with 42 counts of molestation in Orange County and Milwaukee.

That same year, Widera became a fugitive and spent a year on the run, mostly in Mexico. In 2003, Mexican authorities cornered him in Mazatlan and he jumped to his death from a third-floor hotel window.

He was 62.

According to documents released when the Diocese of Orange entered into a $100-million settlement with abuse victims, what Cousins actually wrote to officials in Orange was not only that Widera had a “moral problem having to do with a boy” but also that he had a more recent “repetition” and needed to leave the state for legal reasons.

“From all the professional information I can gather, there would seem no great risk in allowing this man to return to pastoral work but there are legal complications at present writing,” Cousins wrote. “Incidentally, these legal technicalities would permit Father’s going to another state as long as treatment is continued.”

Much of the pretrial maneuvering leading up to the settlement involved an intractable dispute over whether that letter effectively notified California religious authorities of the danger Widera posed.

Lawyers for the Milwaukee Archdiocese argued that although the child molestation conviction was not specified, there was enough in the letter to warn California officials to take precautions.

Under the agreement, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee will pay $8.25 million to Widera’s victims, and insurance will provide the remainder. “He killed himself years ago, but he still lives in my skin,” Guerrero said. “There isn’t any amount of money that can fix what’s been done.”

john.spano@latimes.com