Anchorage Daily News

FAIRBANKS -- The deadline is approaching for Alaska sex abuse victims to file claims against the Fairbanks Catholic Diocese.

The deadline is Dec. 2 and was imposed when the diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after it was unable to settle with 140 plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs filed claims against the diocese for alleged sexual abuse by priests and church workers. The abuse claims dated from the 1950s to the mid-1980s.

Since the diocese began advertising the upcoming deadline, more than 70 new claimants have come forward alleging sexual abuse by a church associate, Diocesan chancellor Robert Hannon said.

The diocese has run its last ads on Alaska public radio, in newspapers around the state and papers in Seattle; Spokane, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; and USA Today.

Chris Cooke, an attorney with an Anchorage law firm that represents 220 claimants to date, stressed the importance of the Dec. 2 deadline for people contemplating coming forward.

If anyone has a legitimate sexual abuse claim against the diocese and doesn't come forward by Dec. 2, their right to make a claim is terminated after that date, he said.

"It can't be overemphasized," Cooke said. "There aren't going to be any exceptions."

According to Cooke, the claimants who have come forward in the past four or five months have widened the circle of people in areas affected by previously identified chronic abusers.

"However, we have had people calling from other locations and new offenders and communities where we didn't have clients before," he said.

Cooke said money hasn't been a dominant factor with these recent claimants.

As the deadline nears, the diocese continues to actively organize its assets and is in mediation with one of the main insurers during the time frame when the abuse took place.

Since litigation began with the first plaintiffs in August 2002 and the first lawsuit against the Fairbanks diocese was filed in 2003, the diocese has spent "hundreds of thousands of dollars" on legal fees, Hannon said. "We don't have an accurate figure."

"We're trying to liquidate all of our real estate or get loans or mortgages and put it in a pot for claimants, and we're talking with our insurance carriers and are in discussion with the Committee of Claimants," Hannon said.

There are still many unanswered questions regarding the diocese's assets that won't be resolved until lawyers from both sides hash it out in court.

Ronnie Rosenberg, the diocese's legal coordinator said questions yet to be resolved include whether bequests of money or property donated to the diocese for specific purposes such as programs or endowments will be included in the settlement.

"We are asserting that parish property belongs to the parish," she said.

Forty-seven Catholic parishes are located in the sprawling diocese, which encompasses almost a half million square miles from the Alaska Range to the Arctic Ocean, bounded on the east by the Canadian border and on the west by the Bering Sea.

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