Tenacious Advocacy For The Injured

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$8.2 Million Settlement – Clergy Sexual Abuse

We represented five different women who had been sexually molested by Steven Kiesle, a Catholic priest in Fremont, California, when the girls were 8 to 11 years old during the years 1969 to 1972. Steven Kiesle had admitted molesting many children and bragged that he was the “pied piper” to children. He said that he tried to molest every child that sat on his lap. When asked how many children he had molested over the years, he answered “tons.” We held the Oakland Diocese responsible for continually allowing Kiesle to be a priest when they had evidence he had been inappropriately touching children and had been found guilty of a felony. Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict, had denied the request of the Oakland Diocese to Laicize, i.e. remove, Kiesle as a Priest in the 1980’s. This information was only recently made known and caused a worldwide scandal for the Vatican.