German court orders diocese to pay clergy abuse victim over $300,000

BERLIN (AP) — A court has ordered a German diocese to pay 300,000 euros ($323,000) in compensation to a former altar boy who was repeatedly abused by a Catholic priest in the 1970s. A victims’ association said that Tuesday’s ruling was the first of its kind in Germany. The state court in Cologne ruled in a case in which the plaintiff, a man now aged 62 who was abused more than 300 times by a priest, had sought 750,000 euros from the Cologne archdiocese. The archdiocese decided against invoking the statute of limitations in the case. The German church so far has made voluntary payments to survivors of sexual abuse by clergy, which victims’ groups have criticized as too small.