Catholic dioceses in New Jersey will name priests accused of child sex abuse

The Catholic Church in New Jersey early next year will name all priests and deacons who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors, Cardinal Joseph Tobin announced Monday.

The naming of the alleged abusers is part of a larger effort by the church that includes a "complete review" of abuse allegations and the establishment of a victim compensation fund and counseling program, Tobin said in a statement. 

The announcement comes amid a time of turmoil in the church, following abuse controversies and alleged church coverups of abuse that have led some faithful to question their support of the church and its leadership over the years. Victims' advocates said they remained skeptical that the church would do a thorough investigation or name everyone complicit in abuse. 

A two-year investigation in Pennsylvania found more than 1,000 victims there over 70 years and evidence of a coverup by church leaders. Some 300 Pennsylvania priests were implicated, including at least four who had spent part of their ministries in New Jersey.

Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark, did not say how many priests and deacons the church has already identified in connection with credible abuse allegations.

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Church officials, he said, were reviewing past abuse allegations in coordination with the office of New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, who launched a task force in September to investigate clergy abuse. 

In June, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of retired Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former Newark and Washington, D.C., archbishop who was accused of sexually abusing a minor decades earlier as a priest in New York. 

Church leaders in New Jersey acknowledged that McCarrick had been accused of sexual abuse by three adults in New Jersey, with two of those cases resulting in confidential legal settlements. 

"We know people are unhappy and shocked and saddened by the events of this past summer," Goodness said. "This is one of the ways we are trying to address this — with transparency and honesty, to let everyone know we, in fact, take the matter very seriously and are taking action."

Goodness said that at this time the initiative covers only diocesan priests who have worked in New Jersey, not priests who belong to religious orders, which operate independently of diocesan control.

Accusations have surfaced against order priests as well as diocesan priests in New Jersey. In July, for instance, a letter sent to alumni and others affiliated with the Delbarton School in Morris Township said 13 monks from St. Mary's Abbey, which runs the school, had been accused of sexually abusing 30 people over the past three decades. 

Those who came forward included former Delbarton students as well as a parishioner at St. James Church in Basking Ridge and former students of St. Elizabeth of Hungary School in Linden, which was staffed by the abbey, the letter said. 

Tobin on Monday also announced the establishment of a victim compensation fund and counseling program. The program will provide resources to victims of child sexual abuse by clergy and employees, regardless of whether their claims meet the time requirements under New Jersey's statute of limitations, he said.

All the dioceses in New Jersey — Camden, Trenton, Paterson and Metuchen — in addition to the Newark Archdiocese, will participate, he said. The program will "give victims a formal voice and allow them to be heard by an independent panel," Tobin said in the statement. 

The initiative expands on the current arrangement through which the Catholic Church in New Jersey already has provided some $50 million in financial settlements to victims of abuse on a case-by-case basis over decades. 

The Diocese of Metuchen said the program formalizes what it has been doing since 1981, when it was founded. Since then, the diocese has paid $1.5 million to victims.

The diocese also said it has reported every allegation of abuse to law enforcement since an audit of priest files in 2002 and that it recently hired a firm to conduct another review. 

"Our diocesan review board, which consists of a majority of laypeople, reviews every claim and includes a past victim of clergy sex abuse," said Erin Friedlander, a spokeswoman for the Diocese of Metuchen. "It remains a priority for the Diocese of Metuchen to continue our efforts to aid victims in the process of seeking justice and healing.

Bishop Dennis Sullivan of the Diocese of Camden said the diocese had created policies, procedures and preventive education for years "to directly address the horror of sexual abuse perpetrated against minors in South Jersey."

"The decision to unify the response of all dioceses in New Jersey is another step in these efforts," he said.

'How can we trust them?'

Church officials said they will meet with stakeholders, including victims' advocates, to figure out how the program will work and that details will be announced as they become available.

Robert Hoatson, who heads the group Road to Recovery, which advocates for abuse victims, expressed skepticism, saying the church has done a poor job of policing itself in matters of sex abuse.

"How can we trust them, because for decades we have gotten nothing but coverups and obfuscations and inaccurate information?" said Hoatson, a former Catholic priest with the Archdiocese of Newark.

In other states, he said, there were wide discrepancies between church lists of abusive priests and those identified in public investigations. 

"We need total, compete and absolute transparency from the church," he said. "All files of clergy who have sexually abused children, teens and vulnerable adults should be released so that the public and parishioners and Catholics can feel as if the church is getting a handle on this."

Mark Crawford, New Jersey director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said he also had serious concerns about the to-be-released names and the compensation fund.

"For years, they had the opportunity to do the right thing and didn’t do it," he said. "It's only because legislation is there and moving that they come and say: We are willing to compensate victims. They do it on their terms."

The church is releasing names because they will come out anyway after the state's investigation, Crawford said.

"Why hasn't this been done years ago? We’ve been calling for this for years," he said.

Both Hoatson and Crawford renewed calls for New Jersey to repeal its statute of limitations law so that abuse survivors could file claims in court.

Two bills before the New Jersey Legislature would eliminate the statute of limitations for victims of child sexual abuse and hold institutions accountable for failing to protect children. Current laws demand that civil action be filed within two years after a victim turns 18.