Victims of a former Lutheran minister who sexually molested boys won a jury award of nearly $37 million Thursday, bringing the total payout in the case to about $69 million.
The case is the most serious to hit the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which has about 5 million members, and has drawn comparisons to the worst abuses committed during the Roman Catholic molestation crisis.
In addition to Thursday's verdict, an attorney for the plaintiffs disclosed that separate settlements reached before the trial were worth $32 million. Those deals were struck with the Chicago-based denomination and the seminary in Columbus, Ohio, that Gerald Patrick Thomas Jr. attended.
The lawsuit charged that former Bishop Mark Herbener of the Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana Synod, and former bishop's assistant Earl Eliason, ignored warnings about Thomas' behavior.
Thomas, minister of Marshall's Good Shepherd Lutheran Church from 1997 until his arrest in 2001, was sentenced last year to 397 years in state prison for molesting boys. The victims said the congregation was not warned about several incidents in which Thomas was accused of inappropriate behavior.
Jurors deliberated for about five hours over two days before rendering their verdict. Nine plaintiffs won awards in the suit, ranging from $50,000 to $9.8 million.
"I find no reason the verdict should not be accepted," said District Judge Bonnie Leggat, who presided over the case.
In his closing argument, synod attorney Tracy Crawford said Herbener and Eliason acted reasonably in assigning Thomas to Marshall, based upon his graduation from the Trinity Lutheran Seminary.
But plaintiffs attorneys said the synod did not disclose that Thomas had given tequila shots to two teenage boys and that the boys had found a gay pornographic video in the parsonage when Thomas served as a ministry intern in Wilson, Texas, in 1996.
Eliason denied knowing about Thomas' past. But the victims made Eliason's background an issue, noting that he pleaded no-contest three times - in 1987, 1996 and 2003 - to indecent exposure charges.
Thomas, 41, was charged in 2001 after a teenager found nude images of friends on the pastor's computer and tried to blackmail him.
Convicted on federal child pornography charges, he is serving five years at the U.S. Penitentiary in Beaumont. His state sentence will start after that.
There have been few publicly disclosed claims of abuse against ELCA ministers. But victims' advocates have drawn parallels between the Thomas case and lawsuits against Catholic dioceses in recent years.
The Archdiocese of Boston agreed last fall to pay $85 million to 552 people - the largest overall settlement.
In 1998, 11 victims of former Catholic priest Rudy Kos of Dallas won individual payouts of about $2.8 million each, for a total settlement of about $31 million.
And in 1999, two brothers won $6.5 million each from the Diocese of Stockton, Calif.