But some cases, like Mercado's, name priests who are dead, and are not already on such lists, complicating the possibility of defense on the part of a diocese.
"Dead people can't defend themselves," Mark Chopko, former general counsel to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the AP.
"There is also no one there to be interviewed. If a diocese gets a claim that Father Smith abused somebody in 1947, and there is nothing in Father Smith's file and there is no one to ask whether there is merit or not, the diocese is stuck," he added.
Steven Alter, a lawyer who has represented multiple sex abuse victims and is collecting more clients, insisted to the AP that "it's not a cash grab."
"They (victims) want to have a voice. They want to help other people and make sure it doesn't happen again. I haven't had one person ask me about the money yet," he said.
The new wave of abuse cases comes after several years of sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Church in the United States, including the allegations against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the grand jury report from Pennsylvania detailing decades of abuse cases, which triggered an avalanche of victims to come forward and investigations of clergy sex abuse in dioceses across the country.
The newly relaxed or eliminated statutes of limitations in these 15 states will further strain diocesan finances, with dioceses looking to victim compensation funds or selling valuable real estate as ways to pay victims.
Victim compensation funds are currently being used in several dioceses, including the Archdiocese of New York, every diocese in the states of New Jersey and Colorado, and several dioceses in Pennsylvania and California.
These funds offer to settle with victims outside of court, which means that victims are compensated more quickly, but at a lower amount than what they might have won in court, according to the AP. Compensation funds are formed by donations taken up specifically for that purpose, and are not funded by donations made to Catholic schools, seminaries, or other ministries.
Since setting up its fund in 2016, the Archdiocese of New York has paid "more than $67 million to 338 alleged victims, an average $200,000 each," the AP reported.
In a 2018 op-ed for the New York Daily News, Dolan said that the use of victim compensation funds "surpasses endless and costly litigation - which can further hurt the victim-survivors; it insures fair and reasonable compensation; and prevents the real possibility - as has happened elsewhere - of bankrupting both public and private organizations, including churches, that provide essential services in education, charity and health care."
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Still, bankruptcy may be in the future for some already financially strained dioceses, which also leads to less compensation for victims than if they were to win at a trial. A Penn State study cited by the AP of 16 dioceses and other religious organizations that had recently filed for bankruptcy were able to settle with sex abuse victims for an average of $288,168 per case.
Paul Mones, a Los Angeles lawyer who has successfully prosecuted millions of dollars worth of sex abuse cases against the Catholic Church, told the AP that if these newly-revealed cases are taken to trial, the amount that the Church will owe in victim compensation could be "astronomical."