Judge OKs USD 60M settlement in Haiti sex abuse case

A federal judge in Connecticut has approved a USD 60 million legal settlement involving as many as 170 people who say they were sexually abused as children at a now-defunct charity school in Haiti.

That's according to lawyers who filed the class-action lawsuit on behalf of poor and often homeless boys who attended the Project Pierre Toussaint School over a period of more than a decade beginning in the late 1990s.

A founder of the school, Fairfield University graduate Douglas Perlitz, is serving a nearly 20-year prison sentence for sexual abuse.

The defendants included the university and religious organisations which financially supported the Haiti school.

The lawsuit alleged they were negligent in supervising Perlitz and failed to prevent the abuse.

Fairfield said in an earlier statement it played no role in running the Haiti school.