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Youngstown Diocese had no victims in most recent Brother Baker settlement
By Ed Runyan
YOUNGSTOWN
The $8 million settlement reached in Pennsylvania between 88 sex-abuse victims of Brother Stephen Baker did not involve any Ohio victims, but there are still 28 alleged Ohio victims with claims.
Atty. Mitchell Garabedian of Boston said he plans to begin asking the Diocese of Youngstown for settlement negotiations “forthwith” regarding the 28 who claim also to have been victims of the Franciscan friar while he taught at Warren John F. Kennedy High School from 1986 to 1992.
Garabedian said a representative for the Diocese of Youngstown participated in the negotiations that resulted in the $8 million Pennsylvania settlement, but it was not because any victims were from within the Youngstown diocese.
The settlement was for 88 alleged sex-abuse victims of Brother Baker while he taught at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, Pa., from 1992 to 2001.
Garabedian said the 28 in Ohio are separate from the 11 men who received a settlement from the Youngstown diocese, Warren JFK High School, and Brother Baker’s religious order, the Third Order Regular Franciscans, in 2012 because of alleged sexual misconduct by Brother Baker while at JFK.
On Tuesday, the Youngstown diocese issued a news release saying it participated in settlement negotiations in Pennsylvania “for reasons of pastoral care and healing,” not because the lawsuit required its participation.
The statement adds that the diocese “had no notice or knowledge of any misconduct by Brother Baker” at JFK until years after he had left JFK, and that the JFK settlements “were based solely on pastoral concern and healing.”
The statement said the diocese has been notified of “25 additional claims of abuse by Brother Baker while at JFK,” and the Diocese will follow its child-protection policy, which calls for it to “make reasonable attempts to help victims receive immediate, competent, therapeutic assistance and spiritual support.”
“The Diocese has sincere concern for anyone who might have been abused by a cleric or employee, and we will continue to approach each claim in the spirit of pastoral concern and healing,” the statement says.
The Third Order Regular assigned Brother Baker to Bishop McCort when he left Warren JFK, the Diocese points out.
The 2013 announcement of the 2012 settlement caused additional alleged victims in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan to begin speaking to attorneys about legal action, Garabedian said.
Garabedian, who represented the 11 JFK victims, also represents six people in Michigan, who worked in a Catholic school in Michigan prior to coming to Ohio. In all, Brother Baker worked in Catholic schools from 1982 to 2007 in three states. He committed suicide in 2013 after news of the JFK settlement was revealed,
“It’s clear he abused hundreds of children,” Garabedian said, adding that parents reported sexual misconduct regarding Brother Baker in Michigan and were told he would be transferred to a girls-only school in Ohio.
That’s when he began teaching at St. Mary’s Middle School in Warren, a Catholic school for boys and girls, Garabedian said.