{"id":281842,"date":"2026-04-23T10:45:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T10:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/281842\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T10:45:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T10:45:25","slug":"verdict-reached-in-bellwether-sex-abuse-lawsuit-against-oakland-diocese-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/281842\/","title":{"rendered":"Verdict reached in bellwether sex abuse lawsuit against Oakland Diocese"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"FormerFormer Catholic priest Stephen Kiesle on Thursday, July 24, 2003, in Dept. 22 of the A.F. Bray Courthouse, in Martinez, Calif. (Susan Tripp Pollard\/Bay Area News Group archive)\u00a0<\/p>\n

The jury ordered the payout to a former Union City altar boy \u2014 Steve Woodall, 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 with other boys. The lawsuit ranked as the first of six so-called \u201cbellwether\u201d cases against the diocese, which were allowed to proceed toward trial after years of delays and plodding settlement talks brought on the diocese\u2019s decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023.<\/p>\n

Standing outside the courthouse, the long-ago altar boy said he was \u201cforever grateful\u201d to the jury for their decision, saying the payout was \u201cmore than I could ever imagine.\u201d Though he is a victim of sexual abuse, he gave the Bay Area News Group permission to name him publicly Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still in shock, really,\u201d said Woodall, who was named as John Doe when the lawsuit was filed. He added that he hoped the verdict would compel the diocese to significantly increase its settlement offers to other abuse victims.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people out there who are hurting a lot, and we need to take care of them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In hailing the verdict Wednesday, an attorney for the plaintiff\u00a0said it \u201cshows that our community recognizes how harmful \u2013 not just for a week or a month, but for a lifetime \u2013 sexual abuse of a child is.\u201d He called on the diocese to deliver similarly to roughly 350 other people currently suing the organization, given how prior offers have ranged more in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per victim.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople, parents and adults are tired of the bullshit coming from these institutions,\u201d said the attorney, Rick Simons. \u201cThey\u2019re tired of kids being abused, and they want it to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement, Michael Barber, the bishop of Oakland, reiterated his apology to abuse victims, adding that \u201cwe pray that this decision helps bring peace and healing to the survivor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAwards of this magnitude underscore the necessity of the bankruptcy process and a confirmed plan that pays all survivors fairly and equitably, not just those fortunate enough to be first in line for a trial,\u201d the statement said. It added that the church has since implemented \u201cdecisive policies\u201d to protect children from future abuse.<\/p>\n

Until now, the case had ranked among the hundreds of lawsuits that had been placed on hold when the diocese declared bankruptcy in May 2023. But last year, a bankruptcy judge allowed six of those lawsuits to proceed to trial, so that each side could gauge how juries would react to their claims and potentially hasten an all-encompassing settlement. The next such case could begin in the coming months.<\/p>\n

Both sides remain far apart on any potential deal. A committee representing the abuse victims most recently demanded $314.1 million over the course of three-and-a-half years from the diocese and a related corporation overseeing its schools. That compared with an offer of $180 million from the diocese and that corporation, including an additional $44.3 million from its insurers; the victims\u2019 committee wants to negotiate its own settlement with those insurance companies, on the premise that they could secure significantly more money from them.<\/p>\n

The jury in Woodall\u2019s case\u00a0found the diocese was liable for $12 million in past non-economic damages, as well as $4 million in future non-economic damages.<\/p>\n

The lone juror to vocally disagree in court Wednesday with both damage amounts later told this news organization that he wanted an even higher payout to the accuser \u2014 a verdict totaling $28 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel so sorry for him,\u201d said the juror, asking only to be identified by his first name and last initial, Mikhail S. \u201cAll these years, he suffered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted the plaintiff after this ordeal not to feel like a victim, but a warrior,\u201d the juror added.<\/p>\n

The juror added that testimony throughout the nearly four-day trial was compelling, calling the accuser\u2019s witnesses \u201csincere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t like watching Oscar movies \u2014 you see people who are not acting, and that\u2019s very impressive. I trusted all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In testimony Monday, Woodall described 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. The repeated sexual assaults left him 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

Woodall was initially compensated by the diocese for therapy from 2002 through 2010. Yet he testified the church ended that aid in 2010, after the man\u2019s clinician objected to demands by the diocese to share information about his diagnosis and prognosis. The diocese\u2019s demands for that information \u201churt me,\u201d Woodall said, \u201cbecause in a way, I felt like this was them not believing that something did happen to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the trial, attorneys for the diocese did not dispute that Kiesle abused the boy. Rather, they questioned during opening statements whether the man\u2019s decades-long mental struggles were caused by the abuse or by a series of other traumas he experienced in his life, including the death of his best friend from a brain tumor in fifth grade, bullying in middle school and his mother\u2019s alcoholism.<\/p>\n

Kiesle, now 79, is alleged to have abused victims in more than five dozen of the 350 or so pending lawsuits against the Oakland diocese. He has multiple sexual abuse convictions on his record, and did not appear in court this month due to the fact he is currently serving another prison sentence in a 2022 vehicular manslaughter case.<\/p>\n

The verdict marks a \u201cmonumental moment\u201d for abuse victims, particularly given the financial implications it could hold, said Dan McNevin, a state treasurer with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. The award dwarfs every settlement offer from the diocese so far, and would saddle the entity with more than $5 billion in liabilities if awarded to every other person currently suing the diocese for past abuse, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe jury spoke pretty loudly that enabling abuse, covering it up, stiff-arming survivors is unacceptable,\u201d McNevin said.\u00a0\u201cIt represents a multi-billion dollar change in peoples\u2019 attitudes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Alameda County jury on Wednesday delivered a $16 million judgment against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,184,7,8,332,2333,1533,181,23,100,143,145,144,182,385,6163,2531,7701,94685,43205],"class_list":{"0":"post-281842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-alameda-county","9":"tag-bay-area","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-east-bay","13":"tag-editors-picks","14":"tag-keywee","15":"tag-latest-headlines","16":"tag-local-news","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-oakland","19":"tag-oakland-headlines","20":"tag-oakland-news","21":"tag-pm-report","22":"tag-regional","23":"tag-religion","24":"tag-sexual-assault","25":"tag-sexual-misconduct","26":"tag-social-alert","27":"tag-union-city"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281842","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=281842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}