A jury in Alameda County, California, on Wednesday delivered a $16 million verdict against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland, in a key lawsuit that could have far-reaching consequences for hundreds of people claiming decades of abuse by the church’s priests.

The jury ordered the payout to a former Union City altar boy — now a 61-year-old father of four — who claimed he had twice been molested in 1975 by a notorious priest, Stephen Kiesle, during church sleepovers. The lawsuit was one of six so-called “bellwether” cases against the diocese, which were allowed to proceed toward trial after years of delays brought on the diocese’s decision to file for bankruptcy protection in 2023.

On Monday, an attorney for that former altar boy hailed the verdict as a message to the Diocese to significantly increase their settlement offers, amid glacial progress toward reaching an accord in some 350 other lawsuits claiming similar abuse.

That former altar boy, who is named as John Doe in the lawsuit, described during testimony this week being made to undress in Kiesle’s rectory bedroom during a sleepover as a fifth-grader, before being molested alongside another child as part of a role-playing bedtime story.

The repeated sexual assaults left the long-ago altar boy with decades of post-traumatic stress that he often buried “with two feet of concrete,” and led to thousands of dollars in therapy treatments, according to court testimony.

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