'Prejudice' against abuse survivors

The Christian Brothers had a misplaced prejudice against abuse survivors who pursued them through the courts in the 1990s, a lawyer for the order has told a royal commission.

Howard Harrison, a partner at Carroll and O'Dea solicitors, said on Friday there may have been an ill-informed categorisation that people seeking compensation through the courts were somehow less deserving.

"A misplaced prejudice," Mr Harrison said in response to a question at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Perth on Friday.

The commission is hearing testimony about how civil litigation against the order in the mid-1990's was handled.

The commission earlier this week heard evidence from survivors of extreme physical and sexual abuse at four WA Christian Brothers facilities between 1947 and 1968.

Counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness asked if the Christian Brothers felt affronted that children abused while in the care of the order had pursued them through the courts.

"Could have been," Mr Harrison said.

A $30 million settlement proposal put forward by the survivors' lawyers, Slater & Gordon, was first whittled down to between $18 million and $20 million.

It was then reduced further to $9.5 million and then $7.5 million.

Mr Harrison maintained an offer of $5 million to settle the matter.

"So is it the case that throughout these settlement negotiations, the plaintiffs had dropped from $30 million to $5 million - you started at $5 million and didn't budge," Ms Furness asked.

"I think we started at $3 million," Mr Harrison said.

Eventually, $3.5 million was put into a trust for survivors of abuse.

In all, 124 men were offered compensation of either $25,000, $10,000 or $9,750 from the trust.

The commission heard the $9.5 million settlement offer was broken down as $4.5 million for a survivors trust, $2.5 million in costs to Slater and Gordon, and another $2.5 million cash payments for cases of significant and serious alleged injury.

Mr Harrison said at the time he thought there would be only 30 men who would require compensation for serious sexual abuse.

The hearings continue.