March 28 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Tuesday upheld the Boy Scouts of America’s $2.46 billion settlement over decades of sex abuse claims, rejecting appeals by some insurers. of the group and abuse claimants.
US District Judge Richard Andrews in Wilmington, Delaware, ruled that the Boy Scouts settlement, which would create the largest sexual abuse settlement fund in US history, was a good faith effort to settle the claims of more than 80,000 men who say they were abused as children. of troop leaders.
The Boy Scouts’ settlement, approved by the bankruptcy court in September, is supported by 86% of abuse claimants and the Boy Scouts’ two largest insurers.
The Boy Scouts organization said it was “very grateful” to survivors of abuse who spoke about their experiences and voted to support the settlement.
“We look forward to the organization’s exit from bankruptcy in the near future and strongly believe that the mission of Scouting will be preserved for future generations,” the Boy Scouts of America said in a statement.
The Coalition of Abused Scouts for Justice, a group of 18,000 survivors of sexual abuse, said the agreement would bring “some justice to tens of thousands of survivors, men and women, many of whom have been waiting in the decades for this day to come.”
A group of insurers challenging the settlement declined to comment.
The judge rejected appeals by the insurers who argued that the Boy Scouts organization conspired with the abuse claimants to shift liability to the insurers.
The judge also rejected appeals by some abuse claimants who argued the agreement improperly prevented them from suing organizations not part of the bankruptcy, including local Boy Scouts councils and the Archbishop of Guam.
The money for the settlement comes from Boy Scouts, local councils, insurers and organizations that charter Scouting units and activities, including churches. The Boy Scouts also contributed additional insurance rights, which could be worth more than $4 billion, to the fund that will pay the abuse claims, according to Andrews’ decision.
The amount of money individual abuse survivors can receive from a bankruptcy plan ranges from $3,500 to $2.7 million, depending on the severity of the alleged abuse, where and when it occurred, and other factors. .
The bankruptcy settlement addresses an existential threat to the 113-year-old organization, which filed for bankruptcy in February 2020 after several US states enacted laws allowing accusers to sue those allegations of abuse spanning decades. The Boy Scouts organization, already facing declining membership, previously said it could not survive without resolving the bankruptcy cases.
Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool
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