Sex abuse settlement brings more accountability, plaintiffs say

The $80 million proposed settlement of a lawsuit involving 32 plaintiffs who were sexually abused by a Kamehameha Schools psychiatric consultant decades ago is being heralded for its transparency and the added accountability measures it will bring to help prevent future abuses.

“We have to believe that our pain and our anguish wasn’t for nothing,” said Alika Bajo, one of the abuse victims — they call themselves survivors — of the late Dr. Robert Browne.

Bajo, who says he was abused as a 13-year-old Kamehameha student in the 1970s and has suffered from drug abuse and depression in the ensuing years, spoke at an emotional, tear-filled news conference Friday announcing the settlement.

He was joined by his wife, Deborah; fellow plaintiff Malia Marquez, whose late brother Anthony Lum was abused by Browne; and several of their lawyers.

“I still have aloha for Kamehameha,” Marquez said, fighting back tears. “But what I don’t have is my brother. There’s no amount of money that can bring him back.”

If approved by the probate court, the proposed deal will represent what is believed to be the largest personal injury settlement in Hawaii history. It also will be a major step in closing one of the most tumultuous controversies in decades to hit the politically powerful and wealthy institution charged with educating Native Hawaiians.

But the school still is negotiating with two other plaintiffs and could face a legal battle against St. Francis, another defendant and Browne’s employer for the 20-plus years he treated troubled Kamehameha students at his St. Francis office from the late 1950s to the early ’80s.

St. Francis is not part of the proposed settlement.

“We’re very disappointed they didn’t step forward,” Micah Kane, chairman of Kamehameha’s board of trustees, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Kamehameha will pay the $80 million, but it intends to try to get St. Francis to cover part of that amount. If the school is unsuccessful, it could take St. Francis to court, arguing that the health care provider is refusing to acknowledge its obligations as Browne’s employer.

“We are disappointed to learn Kamehameha Schools will now be pursuing a claim against the Sisters of St. Francis, who for 135 years have been serving the people of Hawaii, St. Francis Healthcare System and our healthcare ministries,” Sister Davilyn Ah Chick, chairwoman of the system’s board of directors, said in a statement.

Browne, former chief of psychiatry for then-St. Francis Hospital, killed himself in 1991 outside his Manoa home after being confronted hours earlier by a former Kamehameha student.

In addition to the $80 million payout, the proposed agreement calls for establishment of a recovery fund to assist students, including past ones, with treatment services for sexual or physical abuse.

It also calls for the hiring of an independent expert to review information received through a hotline operated by an outside vendor. The hotline, which the school already has in place, is for students to report abuse and other problems.

But in a sign of just how difficult the path has been toward reaching a settlement, the two sides don’t agree on the role of the independent expert.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers say the expert would decide how to respond to the hotline calls, such as whether to contact police or make the information public. They said that was important to their clients because of the school’s past decisions to conceal the Browne allegations for years, relying on the advice of in-house lawyers.

But Kevin Cockett, a Kamehameha spokesman, said the decisions on how to respond to the hotline information will remain in-house, with the outside expert reviewing them after the fact, essentially serving as an auditor.

Despite the differing positions, Friday was mostly about the two sides applauding the tentative agreement, which came after what sometimes was contentious, bitter wrangling.

“What is most important today is that healing can begin for our ohana — for each survivor, for our organization and for our community,” Kane said.

“We’re making history,” Bajo said. “We’re getting Kamehameha to do something that they didn’t want to do until now.”

Bajo and other plaintiffs also lauded the absence of a confidentiality clause in the proposed agreement — something that Kamehameha typically includes in settlements of lawsuits, they said.

Without such a clause, the plaintiffs are free to speak publicly about the agreement. That’s an indication, they said, that Kamehameha realizes that transparency, rather than concealment, is the best way to approach sex abuse problems.

The settlement applies to 32 of the 34 plaintiffs who filed the 2016 lawsuit and are represented by Mark Davis and Michael Green and their law firms. The two remaining plaintiffs are represented by other lawyers.

Kamehameha is continuing to negotiate with those lawyers.

Not all of the $80 million will go to the plaintiffs.

A portion of that will go to pay attorney fees and legal costs. Davis and Green wouldn’t disclose what percentage the plaintiff lawyers would get, but the typical amount is one-third.

Nine plaintiff attorneys at the Davis and Green law firms worked on the case for about three years. If their share is a third of the settlement, that would amount to about $26 million.

Davis said they have received dozens of phone calls from other former Kamehameha students who were victims of Browne but not part of the lawsuit.

“To this point in time, there has been no validation of that,” Kane told the Star-Advertiser.

Davis and Green cited media coverage in recent months as a factor in bringing about the proposed settlement, noting that even many alumni were critical of how the institution responded over the years once the Browne allegations started surfacing in 1991.