BALTIMORE — Hundreds of people who were sexually abused as children by employees of the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore filed in the church’s bankruptcy case ahead of Friday’s deadline for claims, but the exact figure remains unclear.

“Right now there are over 700, but the claims that were uploaded on Friday are still being counted,” Paul Jan Zdunek, chair of the committee of abuse survivors representing all victims in the bankruptcy case, told The Baltimore Sun on Monday. “It’s taking time. There was a rush at the end.”

Zdunek said that figure “will probably go up.” While it also includes non-abuse-related claims filed by insurers and other entities who did business with the archdiocese, “the majority will be abuse cases,” he added.

It could take a while to determine the exact number of sex abuse claims filed in the case, said attorney Jonathan Schochor, who represents victims in the case, including a member of the survivor’s committee.

“It’ll be at least two weeks because each firm who filed on behalf of survivors has to one, tally, and, two, look for duplicates,” said Schochor, adding that survivors sometimes submit claims independently of those filed for them by attorneys.

Although there may be limited opportunities for survivors to submit claims later if they meet a certain legal criteria, the vast majority of victims of clergy abuse had until midnight Friday to file in the archdiocese’s bankruptcy to be considered for compensation later in the case.

The deadline marked a milestone in the case, coming and going against the backdrop of another important development: Last week, the archdiocese and the survivor’s committee jointly asked to go into mediation to determine how much money the church and its insurers will contribute to compensate victims.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michelle M. Harner has yet to approve that request.

The archdiocese declared bankruptcy Sept. 29, two days before a new state law took effect that eliminated time limits for people abused as children to sue the perpetrators and the institutions that enabled their torment.

Lawmakers enacted the Child Victims Act after Maryland’s attorney general released a report examining abuse in the archdiocese. The report detailed the torment of more than 600 children and young adults at the hands of 156 clergy and other church officials, dating to the 1940s and spanning Baltimore and the nine counties in Central and Western Maryland that make up the diocese’s jurisdiction.

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