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FORTUNE.COM // JULY 2019
ily $5 million for the death of their son at the
World Trade Center, it’s rather hollow.”
A mediator’s goals, Feinberg notes, include
being transparent with survivors about the
workings of that system—even when that
involves assigning numbers to the immeasur-
able. The range of settlement sums is usually
determined by plaintiff and defense lawyers,
but it’s the mediator’s discretion to determine
where an individual’s compensation falls. In
administering the 9/11 fund, for example,
Feinberg set a flat rate of $250,000 for pain
and suffering for each victim and an addi-
tional $100,000 for each surviving spouse and
dependent, avoiding the dilemma of determin-
ing whether one suffered more than another.
For each victim, he then added factors such
as likely lost wages based on Bureau of Labor
Statistics data. The result, he says, was 5,300
eligible claims with no two identical amounts.
“You have to have a methodology,” he says.
In sex-abuse cases, however, methodology
can seem simplistic to the point of cruelty.
The Altoona-Johnstown diocese of the Roman
Catholic Church has reportedly paid out more
than $15 million to survivors of abuse by its
clergy and other employees over the decades.
In 2016, in a blistering report criticizing the
diocese’s handling of the cases, the Pennsylva-
nia state attorney general’s office published a
chart that one bishop had used to determine
payouts. The chart, which the report blasted as
an example of “cold bureaucracy,” featured two
columns: “Level of Abuse” and “Range of Pay-
ment.” One line reads, “above clothing, genital
fondling, $10,000–$25,000.” Another reads,
“Sodomy; Intercourse, $50,000–$175,000.”
In practice, the harmful effects of sexual
abuse spread far beyond the acts themselves,
encompassing a spectrum of emotional
trauma, disability, and physical pain. Distinc-
tions among kinds of suffering do matter, with
huge consequences for survivors. But at some
point, experts say, settlement negotiators have
to agree on how to translate those distinctions
into raw numbers. Actuaries for insurers some-
times devise point systems to determine how
to allocate payouts. Those systems are often
determined based on “peer” cases, with criteria
intended to quantify how a survivor has been
affected since the assault, and to project how
the assault could continue to affect that person.
Morgan McCaul, now a student at the University of Michigan, received a payout earlier this year.
“I HAD A LOT OF
ANXIET Y ... ASKING
MYSELF IF IT’S
ETHICALLY SOUND TO
BE HANDED A CHECK
FOR SOMETHING
THAT CAN NEVER
BE QUANTIFIED.”
SI
MO
N^ B
RU
TY
—S
PO
RT
S^ I
LL
US
TR
AT
ED
