It’s been described as the biggest document release ever regarding clerical sexual abuse — but details in the Los Angeles Times don’t add that much to what we already know:

After a three-year legal fight, documents were released Sunday detailing the years of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the San Diego Diocese that led to a $198.1-million settlement with 144 victims in September 2007.

The documents involved 48 priests, most of whose names the diocese disclosed in March 2007. But few details had been released other than to say “credible allegations” had been made against them. None of the 48 is still in the diocese and all but a half-dozen are dead.

Although the diocese quickly paid the settlement, its lawyers fought in court to limit disclosure of the personnel records, citing various personal and medical-record privacy laws.

Disclosure has become an issue in other dioceses where sexual allegations were made and settlements reached. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which reached a $660-million settlement in 2007, has yet to release the records sought by victims’ attorneys.

In the San Diego case, a retired Superior Court judge Friday ordered that thousands of pages of documents be made public. Most are routine records of monthly reports and various correspondence; only a fraction show allegations or the actions of higher-ups in the church.

But the pages that do involve allegations show a pattern that has become common to clerical sexual abuse cases in other dioceses: Victims and their families were often ignored or called liars; diocese officials transferred priests when allegations were made but never contacted the police; and the San Diego Diocese found parishes for priests being transferred from elsewhere in the country to avoid allegations.

There’s more at the LA Times link. You can also find some more details at the AP story — though, interestingly, the cases it spotlights happened in the ’50s and early ’60s.