MILWAUKEE — As survivors in New York are confronted with a settlement brokered under Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s leadership, Milwaukee survivors are joining them in condemning a process that forces survivors into prolonged litigation, keeps abuse records and files secret from Catholics and the public, and protects church officials who covered up child sex crimes. Hundreds of survivors in the Milwaukee Archdiocese were forced into a court-supervised bankruptcy settlement under Cardinal Dolan after a grueling five-year legal battle.
“Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s retirement with honor is not a moment for celebration,” said Peter Isely, one of hundreds of survivors in the Milwaukee Archdiocese who were forced into bankruptcy under Dolan’s leadership and a founding member of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “It is a bitter indictment of a Catholic hierarchy that continues to reward men who treated the rape and sexual assault of children and vulnerable people as real-estate transactions and PR rehabilitation. Guilty church officials, who functioned as Vatican fixers by brokering church-friendly bankruptcy settlements, limited disclosure and shielded offenders from accountability rather than confronting abuse as the moral catastrophe it is.”
Court-ordered released records in Milwaukee showed that Cardinal Dolan paid hush money to dozens of known pedophile priests to leave quietly, while publicly denying that such payments occurred. The records also revealed that some offenders were steered into secular retraining and allowed to work in unsuspecting communities with children and families before departing ministry. In a letter to the Vatican, Dolan explicitly sought permission to transfer roughly $60 million into a cemetery trust so that those funds would not be available to victims pursuing claims in U.S. courts.
New York survivors are now being asked to accept a similar framework – one in which a settlement is presented as accountability, empty promises are offered as reform, and survivors are told to move on. Milwaukee survivors recognize this moment because we were given the same promises, and we know how those assurances played out once the process concluded and public attention faded.
Milwaukee survivors also know that these settlements are not freely chosen. Survivors are pressured to decide under conditions shaped by delay, financial strain, and emotional exhaustion. What is framed as a choice is, in practice, a forced decision imposed by a system designed to outlast and wear down those who were harmed.
For Milwaukee survivors, this is why claims that bankruptcy and settlement offer “closure” ring hollow. There was no truth-telling, no full accounting of harm, and no accountability for church officials who enabled abuse and concealment. What survivors were offered was not justice, but stonewalling – sealed records, constrained testimony, and pressure to accept an outcome that left the underlying wrongdoing intact.
In Milwaukee, the bankruptcy settlement permanently sealed records relating to more than 200 alleged offenders who were not included on the Archdiocese’s official list, cutting off survivors’ ability to bring forward new evidence or compel disclosure. By terminating all future legal claims, the settlement prevented a fraud investigation into Cardinal Dolan’s manipulation of church funds – a shell game documented in his own correspondence with the Vatican and exposed through court-ordered disclosures. Survivors were left with little, and in some cases, no compensation. Church corporate lawyers enriched themselves. That settlement protected Cardinal Dolan from accountability and foreclosed further legal scrutiny of his conduct.
Adding insult to injury, Dolan now passes the baton to Bishop Ron Hicks of Joliet, Illinois – another bishop with a documented record of covering up abuse, allowing dangerous men to remain in ministry, and concealing the full scope of harm from the public.
“Our alarm is that, just as in Milwaukee, this forced settlement is being used to shield Cardinal Dolan and other church officials from scrutiny of their conduct,” said Mark Salmon, a Milwaukee survivor. “Survivors fear the same outcome is now being engineered by Dolan in New York. And that is nothing to honor or celebrate.”
