OAKLAND -- The Roman Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa and a Sacramento-area woman announced a $3.3 million settlement Friday of a civil suit that alleged defrocked priest Donald Kimball sexually abused the woman for six years starting when she was 15.

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"He messed me up for the rest of my life. I hope by telling my story I can help other people," said 44-year-old Roberta Saum on the steps of the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse by Lake Merritt in Oakland.

Attorneys said nine sexual abuse cases against the Santa Rosa diocese were still pending, four of them involving Kimball.

"This case against Mr. Kimball was arguably the worst of the cases now facing the diocese. With the resolution of this claim, we are now hopeful that we can expedite settlement of the nine cases that remain," diocese attorney Dan Galvin said.

Saum's case was scheduled to go to trial May 11 after two years of settlement talks. Settlement talks on the remaining cases were scheduled for May 12, Galvin said.

The diocese's Bishop Daniel Walsh said, "With this settlement, we reaffirm our commitment to provide just and reasonable compensation to the victims of past abuse, to do all we can to forward the process of healing and reconciliation, and to ensure that such tragic acts are never repeated again."

Saum's attorney Jeff Anderson of St. Paul, Minn. said, "The amount reflects the magnitude of what happened to Roberta and what she was subjected to by Donald Kimball."

Saum said that Kimball, now 61, "pretty much groomed me and manipulated me and he tried to get me to lie" during litigation against him.

"I couldn't have gone through the legal process if I didn't have my faith. I'll be dealing with this the rest of my life. The settlement vindicates me and gives me some closure," said Saum, who is married and lives in Gold Run.

The settlement will be paid with a combination of insurance and diocesan moneys, not funds being raised in a current appeal to parishioners or capital funds for building projects, diocese attorneys said.

The diocese has paid $8.3 million in the past 10 years to settle other similar civil suits alleging sexual abuse by clerics, diocese spokeswoman Deirdre Frontczak said.

Kimball was convicted in 2002 of committing two lewd acts with a girl under age 14 in 1981 in St. John's rectory in Healdsburg, but he was acquitted of raping another underage girl at the Resurrection Parish rectory in Santa Rosa in 1977.

He was sentenced to seven years in prison but his conviction was overturned in 2003 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the California law used to convict him and other sex offenders of decades-old offenses was unconstitutional. He was released from prison and moved to the Windsor area.

At Kimball's criminal trial, Saum testified that she and the one-time host of a popular youth radio program had a sexual relationship for six years that started with youth counseling sessions when she was 15.

She said she considered Kimball a father figure for 25 years but they became estranged when he asked her to lie under oath at a deposition during a civil suit against the Santa Rosa diocese.

Saum said Kimball asked her to deny they ever had a sexual relationship, but she informed him she had told a friend that they had.

"I told him the truth and he said, 'Brandy, I thought you were my friend,"' Saum testified in April 2002.

Saum said she was vulnerable because she'd never met her father and was in a foster home when she met Kimball.

Kimball "controlled me and the rest of my life," Saum said. He performed both of her marriage ceremonies, Saum said.

On Wednesday, a San Francisco jury ordered the San Francisco diocese to pay nearly $6 million to four plaintiffs in a sexual abuse suit against a Catholic priest in the St. Martin of Tours parish in San Jose.

There are 160 such lawsuits by 200 plaintiffs alleging past abuse by Northern California priests.

Diocese attorney Galvin said the $3.3 million settlement in the Saum case was not affected by recent verdicts and he would not speculate on the value of the remaining claims against the diocese.

"It is important to remember that nearly all these cases date back to the 1960s and 1970s," Galvin said, adding the diocese has received no allegations of abuse occurring in the past 15 years.