Church Sexual Abuse Lawsuits: Catholic Diocese and LDS (Mormon) Church Claims

Church abuse lawsuits accuse religious organizations of enabling abuse by clergy, employees, and volunteers, then protecting the institution instead of the victims. Common allegations include transferring accused priests to new parishes, keeping abuse reports from police and parents, allowing known offenders continued access to children, and pressuring families not to report. The core legal claims are negligence, negligent supervision and retention, and in some states failure to report suspected child abuse.

Catholic Church claims

Catholic claims usually name the diocese or archdiocese, the parish, and sometimes a religious order or school. Many involve abuse from the 1950s through the 1990s that became actionable only after states opened revival windows or extended deadlines, such as New York's Child Victims Act and California's AB 218. Because of the volume, more than 40 U.S. Catholic institutions have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to resolve all claims at once.

LDS Church claims

Lawsuits against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints often allege that bishops or other local leaders learned of abuse, sometimes through confession, and did not report it to police, and that the church's help line routed calls to church lawyers. Other suits allege abuse by bishops, missionaries, teachers, and youth leaders. A coordinated wave of California suits filed since August 26, 2024 involved roughly 110 accused LDS leaders and members, including 20 bishops, according to court documents compiled by the watchdog site Floodlit. Suits have also been filed in states including Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, and West Virginia.

For abuse at other institutions, see institutional sexual abuse lawsuits.

Most large Catholic abuse resolutions now come through bankruptcy court. When a diocese files Chapter 11, lawsuits against it pause, survivors file claims by a court deadline called a bar date, and the diocese, its parishes, and its insurers fund a trust that pays survivors under a confirmed plan.

Archdiocese of Los Angeles

In October 2024, the archdiocese agreed to pay $880 million to about 1,350 people abused as minors, without filing for bankruptcy. It was the largest single archdiocese settlement at the time and required the release of abusers' personnel files.

Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York

On September 26, 2024, the Long Island diocese announced a bankruptcy settlement of more than $323 million for about 530 survivors, with $234.8 million from the diocese and $85.3 million from four insurers. It had filed for Chapter 11 in October 2020.

Archdiocese of New Orleans

On December 8, 2025, Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill confirmed a $230 million settlement for roughly 600 survivors, ending a case filed in May 2020. The insurer Travelers separately agreed in principle to add $75 million, which would bring the total to $305 million if the court approves it.

Diocese of Buffalo

In June 2026, the survivors' committee said the case had reached a $326 million settlement for nearly 900 survivors, with $150 million from churches and other diocesan entities.

Still in bankruptcy

Dioceses still in bankruptcy proceedings include the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which filed September 29, 2023, the Diocese of Albany, and the Diocese of Alexandria, Louisiana, which filed in 2025. If a diocese that may owe you is in bankruptcy, check the bar date right away.

There is no LDS Church class action or federal MDL. In April 2025, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation declined to consolidate federal LDS abuse cases, citing different abusers, locations, church policies, and time periods reaching from the 1960s to the present. California cases are coordinated in a state Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding of more than 90 cases, according to plaintiffs' attorneys.

Recent developments include:

• Arizona clergy reporting ruling. On July 30, 2026, the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously held that courts generally cannot second-guess a clergy member's application of religious doctrine in deciding whether to report abuse disclosed in confession, reversing a July 2025 Court of Appeals decision. The case was brought in 2020 by children of Paul Adams, who confessed abuse to LDS bishops. The ruling is binding only in Arizona.
• West Virginia evidence ruling. In July 2026, the West Virginia Supreme Court reversed a ruling that had excluded evidence in lawsuits over abuse by Michael Jensen, allowing plaintiffs to present evidence about what church leaders knew.
• Private resolutions. Plaintiffs' firms report that the church is resolving many claims through a confidential process in which lawyers submit case inventories for review and mediation, with strict confidentiality terms.
• New filings in 2026. In May 2026, a New Jersey man sued in Passaic County Superior Court alleging a church branch president in Paterson groomed and repeatedly assaulted him starting at age 13, with claims including negligent supervision and failure to report under New Jersey law. The same month, an Illinois lawsuit alleged church leaders let a former leader who had already been charged with abusing a minor keep serving in a Rockford congregation, where he allegedly abused a young girl in the early 2000s. These are allegations the church has not been found liable for.
• Mixed results on duty. A federal court in Oregon dismissed one negligence claim over abuse by a father at home, finding the church owed no legal duty for abuse outside church activities.

You may have a claim if someone who had access to you through a church, parish, ward, school, or church youth program sexually abused you, and church officials failed to act reasonably to prevent it. That includes priests, deacons, nuns and brothers, bishops and branch presidents, seminary and school teachers, missionaries, youth leaders, and volunteers.

• Stronger claims involve a church role that gave the abuser access to you, prior complaints about the same person, church leaders who discouraged reporting, or an abuser named on a credibly accused list.
• Harder claims involve abuse by a family member at home where the only church link is that a leader later learned of it. Courts disagree on whether the church owed a duty in those cases, and Arizona's 2026 ruling protects confession-based decisions not to report there.
• Bankruptcy timing matters as much as the facts. If a diocese has a confirmed plan and you did not file by the bar date, you may need to ask the court for permission to file late, which is not always granted.

New York survivors of childhood sexual abuse can sue until age 55, and California has no deadline at all for childhood sexual assault that occurs on or after January 1, 2024. Adults abused by clergy may have claims under adult revival laws, such as California's AB 2777 window through December 31, 2026.

Simple averages are only a rough guide, because trusts use point systems that weigh the type, frequency, and duration of abuse, and attorney fees come out of each award. The Los Angeles settlement averages about $650,000 per survivor before fees, Rockville Centre about $610,000, Buffalo about $360,000, and New Orleans about $380,000 at $230 million. Individual awards within each settlement can be far above or below those figures.

LDS Church settlements are mostly confidential. Plaintiffs' attorneys report that some survivors have received more than $1 million through the church's private process, but those amounts cannot be independently verified.

Settlement money can affect needs-based benefits; see whether a settlement affects SSI or Medicaid. For how fees work, see who pays the lawyers.

Revival windows and extended deadlines. Most church cases filed in the last decade depend on laws that extended or revived the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse. New York's Child Victims Act window, opened August 14, 2019, produced 10,787 cases, and the law now allows claims until age 55. California's AB 218 window ran from 2020 through 2022, and California law allows up to triple damages against an entity proven to have covered up the sexual assault of a minor. Maryland's Child Victims Act, effective October 1, 2023, eliminated the civil deadline for child sexual abuse, which is part of why the Archdiocese of Baltimore filed for bankruptcy days earlier.

Mandatory reporting and clergy privilege. Most states require certain adults to report suspected child abuse, but many exempt information learned in confession. Those exemptions are at the center of LDS failure-to-report cases, as Arizona's 2026 decision shows.

Bankruptcy bar dates. Chapter 11 sets a single deadline for all abuse claims against a diocese. Survivors who miss it may lose the right to recover from that trust. Some plans also release parishes and insurers that contribute money.

Federal claims. For child victims of certain federal sex crimes, such as transporting a minor across state lines for sexual activity, 18 U.S.C. 2255 provides a civil remedy with no filing deadline, and a survivor can recover actual damages or liquidated damages of $150,000.

1. Check for a bankruptcy. If the diocese or order that may be responsible is in Chapter 11, its claim deadline controls, and some are strict.
2. Look up the abuser. Many dioceses publish lists of credibly accused clergy. Being on a list is strong evidence the church knew of a risk.
3. Write down what you remember and who you told, including any church leader.
4. Gather records of your church, school, or youth program participation, and of any therapy or treatment.
5. Do not sign a church release or confidential agreement without independent legal advice, especially in a private LDS resolution process.

Survivors can usually file under a pseudonym, and most attorneys handle these cases on contingency. For more on why these are individual claims rather than class actions, see class action vs. mass tort. Related pages cover youth sports abuse and foster care abuse.

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