NJ high court to hear case between Catholic diocese, prosecutor over investigating sex abuse claims

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A Catholic diocese wants to stop New Jersey from trying to empanel a grand jury to investigate allegations of clergy sexual abuse, with arguments before the state’s high court set for Monday.

After a Pennsylvania grand jury report found over 1,000 children had been abused since the 1940s, New Jersey formed a task force in 2018 and intended to empanel its own grand jury to investigate allegations of abuse there. But the Diocese of Camden pushed back in court in 2021, arguing that state law doesn’t permit having a grand jury investigate possible abuse by private church officials.

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That legal battle has happened away from public view for years, as courts had sealed the proceedings in New Jersey and the attorney general’s office didn’t share updates. But last month, the state Supreme Court unsealed a handful of documents between the diocese and the attorney general after the Bergen Record obtained records detailing the court battle.

The diocese argues that such grand jury investigations are only for governments and public officials.

In 2023, a trial court judge sided with the diocese, finding that such a grand jury would lack authority because it would be focused on “private conduct,” rather than a government agency’s actions. An appeals court affirmed that judgment last year, and Attorney General Matt Platkin appealed to the state Supreme Court.

The documents that the high court unsealed in March sketch out some of what the state’s task force has found so far but don’t include specific allegations. The papers show that 550 phone calls alleging abuse from the 1940s to the “recent past” came into a hotline the state had set up.

The diocese argues a grand jury isn’t needed in large part because of a 2002 memorandum of understanding between New Jersey Catholic dioceses and prosecutors. The memorandum required church officials to report abuse and said authorities would be provided with all relevant information about the allegations. One of the court documents says abuse had been “effectively eradicated” in the church.

But the Pennsylvania grand jury report in 2018 touched off a reexamination of statute of limitations law in New Jersey, which overhauled its civil statute of limitations on childhood sex abuse claims in 2019. The new law allows child victims to sue until they turn 55 or within seven years of their first realization that the abuse caused them harm. The previous statute of limitations was age 20 or two years after first realizing the abuse caused harm.

Also in 2019, New Jersey’s five Catholic dioceses listed more than 180 priests who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing minors over a span of several decades, joining more than two dozen other states that have named suspects of abuse in the wake of the landmark Pennsylvania grand jury report.

Many priests on the lists were deceased; others were removed from ministry.

The Camden diocese, like others across the country, filed for bankruptcy amid a torrent of lawsuits — up to 55, according to court records — stemming from the relaxed statute of limitations.

Then in 2022, the diocese agreed to pay $87.5 million to settle claims involving clergy sex abuse with some 300 accusers in one of the largest cash settlements involving the Catholic church in the United States.

The agreement by the diocese, which encompasses six counties in southern New Jersey on the outskirts of Philadelphia, exceeded the nearly $85 million settlement in 2003 in the clergy abuse scandal in Boston, but was less than other settlements in California and Oregon.