{"id":281208,"date":"2026-04-23T01:14:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T01:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/281208\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T01:14:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T01:14:51","slug":"jury-delivers-16-million-verdict-against-oakland-diocese-in-bellwether-sex-abuse-case-national-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/281208\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury delivers $16 million verdict against Oakland Diocese in bellwether sex abuse case | National News"},"content":{"rendered":"

A jury in Alameda County, California, on Wednesday delivered a $16 million verdict against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland, in a key lawsuit<\/a> that could have far-reaching consequences for hundreds of people claiming decades of abuse by the church\u2019s priests.<\/p>\n

The jury ordered the payout to a former Union City altar boy \u2014 now a 61-year-old father of four \u2014 who claimed he had twice been molested in 1975 by a notorious priest, Stephen Kiesle, during church sleepovers. The lawsuit was one of six so-called \u201cbellwether\u201d cases against the diocese, which were allowed to proceed toward trial after years of delays brought on the diocese\u2019s decision to file for bankruptcy protection in 2023.<\/p>\n

On Monday, an attorney for that former altar boy hailed the verdict as a message to the Diocese to significantly increase their settlement offers, amid glacial progress toward reaching an accord in some 350 other lawsuits claiming similar abuse.<\/p>\n

That former altar boy, who is named as John Doe in the lawsuit, described during testimony this week being made to undress in Kiesle\u2019s rectory bedroom during a sleepover as a fifth-grader, before being molested alongside another child as part of a role-playing bedtime story.<\/p>\n

The repeated sexual assaults left the long-ago altar boy with decades of post-traumatic stress that he often buried \u201cwith two feet of concrete,\u201d and led to thousands of dollars in therapy treatments, according to court testimony.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A jury in Alameda County, California, on Wednesday delivered a $16 million verdict against the Roman Catholic Diocese…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[974,143,145,144,38669],"class_list":["post-281208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-national","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-state-and-regional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}