A California man has been awarded a massive $16 million payout in a civil suit regarding allegations against a former priest from the Diocese of Oakland.
A jury in Alameda County Superior Court on April 22 awarded the eight-figure settlement to an unidentified John Doe amid ongoing bankruptcy proceedings brought by the Oakland Diocese.
The law firm Jeff Anderson and Associations said in a press release that the settlement was “the first case to reach a jury verdict under the California Child Victims Act.” The law, passed in 2019, opened a three-year window for alleged abuse victims to file claims outside of the standard statute of limitations.
The allegations brought by the John Doe in Oakland concerned Father Stephen Kiesle, a priest who has faced multiple abuse allegations dating from the 1970s. The victim said Kiesle abused him during that decade.
Kiesle pleaded no contest in 1978 to lewd conduct involving two boys, for which he received probation, while in the early 2000s he was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading no contest on charges of molesting a girl near Sacramento.
Kiesle was charged in 2022 with vehicular manslaughter and drunk driving after a crash that killed a man in Rossmoor, California. He pleaded no contest to those charges in 2023 and was sentenced to more than six years in state prison.
The Diocese of Oakland says on its list of credibly accused priests that Kiesle was removed from ministry in 1978 and laicized in 1987.
In November 2024 the Oakland Diocese said it would pay up to $200 million as part of a major abuse settlement. The diocese filed for bankruptcy in May 2023.
The bankruptcy filing put nearly all abuse lawsuits against the diocese on hold, though several were allowed to proceed to trial, including the John Doe suit settled on April 22.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.