Buffalo Jury Awards Clergy Sexual Abuse Victim $30 Million in Damages
A Buffalo man was awarded $30 million in damages by the New York State Supreme Court Sept. 29 after a jury determined a Lutheran pastor had molested him when he was a child.
The ruling said Douglas D. Thore, 73, sexually abused the unnamed plaintiff, now 45 years old, multiple times when the plaintiff was 12 or 13 years old. Thore was the pastor of St. Nicodemus Evangelical Lutheran Church in Marilla, New York, from about 1985 to 2004.
The award includes $15 million in compensatory damages for pain and suffering and $15 million in punitive damages.
The plaintiff also is suing St. Nicodemus, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Upstate New York Synod of the ELCA in a separate lawsuit.
Thore resigned in 2004 after allegations of abuse came to light, admitting he had molested two boys in his congregation years earlier, the Buffalo News reported. Thore told church officials he had molested five teenage boys in Western New York and two in Naselle, Washington, before coming to St. Nicodemus.
He was not prosecuted, however, because the alleged incidents fell outside the statute of limitations.
He also said he had previously undergone treatment for sex abuse.
The plaintiff’s lawyer, Amy C. Keller of the Lipsitz Green Scime Cambria law firm, said her client had not told his family about the abuse before and broke down on the stand as he talked about his experience.
“I think it was a lot harder than he anticipated,” she said.
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