Way back in Feb 2009, The Stranger published a story about the how Catholic Church—and, specifically, the Northwest Jesuits—knowingly sent predatory priests up to remote Native Alaskan villages where they could molest and rape with impunity and not get caught.

A few horror-refreshing blockquotes from the story are beneath the jump.

But the good news today:

SEATTLE — In one of the largest settlements in the Roman Catholic church's sweeping sex abuse scandal, an order of priests agreed Friday to pay $166.1 million to hundreds of Native Americans and Alaska Natives who were abused at the order's schools in the northwestern U.S.

The statutes of limitations have run out on many of those crimes, putting the guilty priests (who are still alive) beyond trial. But the case, which had been initially dismissed by some Church supporters and is reportedly the third-largest in Church history, has come to settlement. Even after the Jesuits declared bankruptcy in 2009, allegedly to avoid having to pay out any more than they already had.

The $166.1 million doesn't seem like nearly enough to undo the damage. One person who grew up in Stebbins, Alaska emailed me today about the settlement:

Seen your article about my cousin Delbert Acoman. Wanted to know did he mention others? I remember other kids being molested, i was there. He called it confession time. I am in therapy because of the pain i went thru in Stebbins growing up and for other reasons. To this day i am still seeing a therapist. I try hard to ignore this whole molesting of the priest but its hard when its everywhere. I don't care for the lawsuit. This priest did not only call for the boys. I can vouch all the things that i have seen... Just created a lot of molesting in the village. Some of the kids that were touched back then proceeded on to others.

There's some slightly good news today, but there's no happy ending to the story.

And a quick tour of "The Pedophile's Paradise":

One spring afternoon in 1977, 15-year-old Rachel Mike tried to kill herself for the third time. An Alaska Native, Rachel was living in a tiny town called Stebbins on a remote island called St. Michael. She lived in a house with three bedrooms and nine siblings. Rachel was a drinker, depressed, and starving. "When my parents were drinking, we didn't eat right," she says. "I just wanted to get away from the drinking."

Rachel walked to the bathroom to fetch the family rifle, propped in the bathtub with the dirty laundry (the house didn't have running water). To make sure the gun worked, Rachel loaded a shell and blew a hole in her bedroom wall. Her father, passed out on his bed, didn't hear the shot. Rachel walked behind their small house. Her arms were too short to put the rifle to her head, so she shot herself in her right leg instead.

Rachel was found screaming in a pool of blood by her Auntie Emily and flown 229 miles to a hospital in Nome. The doctor asked if she wanted to see a priest. She said yes. In walked Father James Poole—a popular priest, radio personality on KNOM, and, according to allegations in at least five lawsuits, serial child rapist. Father Poole has never been convicted of a crime, but the Jesuits have settled numerous sex-abuse claims against him since 2005, in excess of $5 million, according to an attorney involved in four of those five lawsuits. Exact figures aren't available because some of the settlements involve confidentiality agreements. The Jesuits have never let a single case against Father Poole go to trial.

In a 2005 deposition, Rachel testified that she had been molested by Father Poole in 1975, while in Nome for her second suicide attempt, an attempted overdose of alcohol and pills. He'd come sit by her bed, put his hand under the hospital blanket, and fondle her, she said.

She traveled between Stebbins and Nome several times in the late 1970s, spending time in hospitals and receiving homes. By 1977, Rachel testified, Poole had given her gonorrhea, and by 1978 she was pregnant with his child. In an interview with The Stranger, she said Poole encouraged her to get an abortion and tell the doctors she had been raped by her father. She followed his advice. "He brainwashed me," she said. "He messed up my head, man."

And:

When Boudreau was a child, the villages of Northwest Alaska were only accessible by plane, boat, or dog sled. Many still are. For the most part, they didn't have public schools, cops, or telephones. Many of the houses were one room and lacked food and consistent heat in the below-zero weather. "The perps would soften up their victims with food and warmth," Wall says, "because that's what the kids didn't have. 'It was always warmer in the rectory,' they say. 'There was always food in the rectory. There was always candy.'"

In those villages, the priests had unusual authority. "In the village, our elders loved the church and the priests so much," Boudreau says. "They were like honored guests in our land. The priest had the utmost power, power that historically the village shaman would have had." If children complained about the priests, it was tantamount to complaining about the village shaman. "I've talked to hundreds of victims in Alaska," Boudreau says, "and many were physically hurt by parents for speaking about this."

The priests came to occupy the role of shamans by a weird confluence of history and microbiology. In the early 1900s, a Spanish-influenza epidemic ripped through Northwest Alaska, sometimes killing entire villages. They called it "the Big Sickness" or "the Big Death" ...

And:

Father Poole's alleged abuses are particularly egregious, earning him a special place in Roosa's and Wall's hearts. He is their archetypal bad guy, their Dr. Mengele of the clerical sex-abuse world: Their clients have described, in sworn testimony, Poole pressing his erections against girls during junior-high dances, being caught by his own mother while masturbating in front of young girls, and much worse. "The defense lawyers have been so disgusted with Poole," Roosa says, "that they've told me off the record, 'anything you tell me about Poole, I'd believe.'"

And:

Why does the church keep sending these priests, who have come to be such a major liability, back into ministry? "It's all about keeping the stores open, keeping the revenue rolling," Wall says. The Alaskan provinces in particular, Wall says, were a source of revenue—not from the Native population living there, but from parishioners in the lower 48 who were encouraged to donate for the Native ministry up north. "You could raise thousands to fund a mission that cost very little to run," Wall says. "The profit margin is huge."

The rest is here.