New Jersey Catholic Diocese pays $87.5 million to its victims of childhood sexual abuse

Thousands of priests around the United States have been accused of sexually abusing children. Source: Shuttershock

On April 19, A New Jersey Roman Catholic diocese agreed to pay $87.5 million to settle lawsuits from about 300 survivors of childhood sexual abuse by clergy members.

“It is my fervent hope that this settlement will be remembered as a positive step in our attempts to rectify past sins,” said Bishop of Camden Dennis J. Sullivan in a letter.

The settlement comes three years after New Jersey’s five Catholic dioceses released a list of 188 clergy members accused of child sexual abuse in that dated back to 1930s. Most of the accused were priests who are now either dead or were removed from the ministry.

Founded in 1937, the Diocese of Camden is comprised of 62 parishes across six counties in Southern New Jersey. The settlement is one of the largest of its kind, superseding the $85 million settlement by Boston dioceses in 2003. A U.S. bankruptcy judge must approve of the settlement before the money is distributed through a trust over a four year period, granting the victims over $260,000 each.

“Today’s partial settlement will finally bring some long overdue level of closure, validation, and healing to these victims in Camden,” said New Jersey Survivors Network of those Accused by Priest (SNAP) leader Mark Crawford. SNAP is a peer network of survivors of sexual abuse by church officials. It has over 25,000 members around the world.

“This settlement with the Bishop of Camden is a powerful advance in accountability. The credit goes to the survivors for standing up for themselves and the truth,” said attorney Jeff Anderson, who represented 74 of the survivors.

Like other hundreds of others across the United States, the five NJ dioceses of Camden, Metuchen, Newark, Paterson and Trenton have been exposed for systemically enabling sexual abuse of minors by priests, deacons, nuns and other clergy members. Many priests with accusations would be discreetly moved to other churches or put on sick leave. Even the few claims deemed credible by the Church would be privately settled.

The list of 188 clergy members accused of sexual abuse reveals just how deep the exploitation of minors in the Catholic Church went. Most of those listed had multiple accusations, sometimes across multiple dioceses. The majority of the accusations are from the 1970s through the 90s, whether the victims made their abuse known then or in recent years.

Shortly after the Church released its list, Anderson released his own list of 300 accused clergy members, 112 of which were not included in the five dioceses original 188. 56 of the accused clergy were from the Diocese of Camden. 

In May 2019, Governor Phil Murphy signed New Jersey Child Sex Abuse Law S477, which extended the statute of limitations for a victim of sexual abuse to file a lawsuit claim. The lawsuit waived all limitations on claims for a two year window, allowing survivors to sue for abuse that occurred decades ago. After the two years, victims of childhood sexual abuse could still file a lawsuit until the victim reaches 55 years old or seven years after the date they realized their abuse. 

“This new law will be one of the best in the nation, granting all sexual abuse survivors the opportunity to access the justice system, and provides an example for other states of concrete legislation they can pass that will help survivors of sexual abuse heal while creating safer, more informed communities,” said SNAP Executive Director Zach Hiner in 2019.

After the bill was signed, New Jersey’s Catholic dioceses were flooded with lawsuits of childhood sexual abuse by clergy members.

In response to the hundreds of claims, the five dioceses created the New Jersey Independent Victim Compensation Program as a way to financially compensate victims of clerical sexual abuse when they were minors. The IVCP was to handle the claims privately instead of going to court. If the victims accepted the settlement money, they could not file a civil lawsuit against the diocese(s). The fund, which closed its application in Jan. 2020, received 650 claims of abuse. By the end of January, $11 million had been paid to 69 settled cases. There have been little to no updates about the 581 remaining cases and the IVCP website does not exist anymore.

The Camden diocese removed itself from the IVCP in summer 2020, citing a loss of revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Oct. 2020, the Camden diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, again due to declining revenue as well as paying about $8 million to victims through IVCP. The diocese would no longer review its unresolved claims.

“If it were just the pandemic, or just the costs of the Victims Compensation Program, we could likely weather the financial impact; however, the combination of these factors has made that impracticable,” said Bishop Sullivan in a statement.

By Nov. 2021, two years after the New Jersey Child Sex Abuse Law was signed, there were thousands of claims of childhood sexual abuse. 850 of these claims filed lawsuits against the Catholic Church. 

“I want to express my sincere apology to all those who have been affected by sexual abuse in our Diocese," Bishop Sullivan said. “My prayers go out to all survivors of abuse and I pledge my continuing commitment to ensure that this terrible chapter in the history of the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey never happens again.”