The St. Louis Archdiocese is preparing its legal response to an insurance company’s refusal to pay for the settlement of a priest sex-abuse case.
Bernard Huger, the archdiocese’s attorney on sex-abuse claims, said the archdiocese has paid the $1.67 million to the family of a boy sexually abused by Father Gary P. Wolken.
The insurer, Evanston Insurance Co., however, has balked at reimbursing the archdiocese.
The company stated in a suit filed in federal court in St. Louis that it hadn’t been informed of the sex-abuse claim within the time frame outlined in the insurance policy.
Huger said the archdiocese contends that it met the requirements because it informed its third-party administrator, Gallagher Bassett Services Inc., within that specified time period.
Wolken, ordained in 1993, was sentenced last year to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to sodomy and child molestation. He had been a friend of the family.