CAMDEN (NJ)
South Jersey Times [Mullica Hill NJ]
February 5, 2025
By Ted Sherman and Rebecca Everett
[See also the transcript of Judge Warshaw’s decision.]
It was a court fight waged quietly behind closed doors for more than six years.
Motions were argued before a judge in Trenton and filed under seal. An appellate panel reaffirmed the lower court decision, that record was hidden as well from the public. Now the Supreme Court has it.
At stake could be some of the darkest secrets of the Catholic Church.
But a series of cryptic court filings that have tracked the case docket over time, along with what had been a sealed transcript first reported Wednesday by NorthJersey.com, tell a story that no one — not the lawyers involved, the prosecutors, nor those directly affected by what may yet be decided — was ever allowed to talk about.
It’s the story of a prolonged fight by a diocese to stop the state’s effort to complete the most comprehensive and transparent investigation into abuse in the Catholic church in New Jersey history.
In 2018, the state’s Attorney General’s office announced it would undertake a new effort to uncover and document decades of allegations of sexual abuse by the clergy, and make the results public. Years later, survivors wondered why nothing had come out.
But now it’s clear: the grand jury investigation never got off the ground because of opposition by at least one of state’s dioceses which questioned the legality of a plan to convene a special grand jury to investigate and report on that history, despite pledging transparency for all that time.
At the same time, the fact that there was even a legal fight over it, now before the New Jersey Supreme Court, was kept secret as well.
The transcript of a May 2023 court hearing clearly spelled out what it was all about.
In it, a judge in Mercer County ruled that the state could not use the grand jury to dig into the sordid allegations of unreported abuse by priests and other members of the clergy, following challenges by the Diocese of Camden.
“No matter how important it might be to chronicle a comprehensive account of the sexual abuse, in New Jersey’s Catholic Churches, it is not the grand jury’s history to write,” said Superior Court Judge Peter E. Warshaw Jr. from the bench, in a sealed opinion handed down in May 2023 and affirmed by a three-judge appellate panel this past June. “This court’s conclusion is that the grand jury does not have the legal authority to return a presentment which focuses exclusively or almost exclusively on misconduct by Catholic priests.”
Mark Crawford, an abuse survivor and state director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, criticized the years of behind-the-scenes rulings and secrecy of all of it.
“It is an incredibly troubling fact that, so far, the New Jersey judicial system has chosen to protect the rights of known child abusing clerics and the bishops who turned a blind eye, instead of the children who had to endure such life altering abuse,” he said, while questioning the ruling to seal such actions and keep it from the public.
A special task force
The case came about after New Jersey officials in September 2018 announced the creation of a special task force to investigate allegations of sexual abuse by members of the clergy, sparked by a Pennsylvania grand jury report that had graphically detailed the abuse by priests who had preyed upon children in that state for years upon years.
Then-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said the task force would be given subpoena power through a grand jury to compel testimony and demand the production of documents from the state’s five Catholic dioceses.
“We owe it to the people of New Jersey to find out whether the same thing happened here,” declared Grewal, days after the shocking revelations in the Keystone State. “If it did, we will take action against those responsible.”
Grand jury investigations are always kept confidential by law enforcement and the Attorney General’s office in the wake of that announcement had for years refused to say whether a grand jury had even been called, or whether a presentment or report of its investigation had ever been completed.
Advocates for an accounting of the sins of the clergy, meanwhile, waited just as long for some kind of reckoning.
The May 2023 hearing, held behind closed doors, though, spelled out why such a promised reckoning never came about.
“The Attorney General has made no secret as to its intentions,” said Warshaw, in a hearing attended by attorneys for the five Catholic dioceses in New Jersey, as well as prosecutors with the state. “The Attorney General has stated that New Jersey should produce a report similar to what a Pennsylvania Grand Jury did.”
According to Warshaw, a state grand jury in late 2018 sent out a subpoena to the five Roman Catholic Dioceses in New Jersey — the Archdiocese of Newark and the Dioceses of Paterson, Metuchen, Trenton and Camden — ultimately reaching agreements with all but Camden on the production of records.
Camden objected, the judge noted, and in 2021 the diocese challenged the grand jury’s authority to even bring a presentment concerning clergy abuse, arguing that there was no authority to do so under New Jersey law. It said such a presentment would violate the establishment clauses of the United States and New Jersey constitutions guaranteeing a separation of church and state.
The state, according to the transcript, in arguing for a grand jury presentment, had argued that the church and its clergy had a “direct and intimate relationship with New Jersey citizens,” and that its leaders were endowed with the public trust.
But agreeing with Camden’s challenge, the judge said a grand jury presentment should refer to public affairs and conditions, not a religious organization.
At the same time, he said those indicted by a grand jury are entitled to a trial and an opportunity to face their accusers.
Not so with a presentment, continued Warshaw, who said such a report by a special grand jury castigates an individual, impugns their integrity “without giving him the slightest opportunity to defend himself.”
Indeed, he continued, it appeared that many of the priests covered by the time frame of the grand jury subpoenas “were dead or of such advanced age that speaking up for oneself would be nearly impossible,” wondering aloud, “who speaks for these individuals?”
The Diocese of Camden, in a statement on Wednesday, said the issue before the court was purely a legal one: whether New Jersey law governing grand jury presentments only applies to public, governmental entities and public officials, not private entities.
Spokesman Michael Walsh said that since 2002, the diocese has published a list of “credibly accused clergy,” all of whom have been removed from ministry.
“The Diocese of Camden recognizes the serious, life-long harms suffered by the victims of abuse by clergy members,” he said, noting that for more than 20 years, the diocese has complied with its obligations to report all allegations of abuse to the appropriate county prosecutor’s office and to the attorney general’s office.
Despite its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding, Walsh said that in April 2022, the diocese reached an agreement with the survivors of abuse that provided $87.5 million plus the proceeds of the diocese’s insurance policies to be funded to a trust for their sole benefit.
The Attorney General’s office declined comment.
The news of the judge’s decision has reverberated across the survivor community, said Bill Crane, who along with his twin brother has alleged abuse by monks at Morristown’s Delbarton School in the 1970s and 1980s. Like many others, he had welcomed the Attorney General’s plan and shared with its investigators what happened to him decades ago.
“It gave victims, some of them for the very first time, the ability to come forward. To say, ‘Hey, I got the state of New Jersey behind me, and now I have the confidence that they’re going to do an investigation,” he said.
Survivors have been anxious for years, he said, waiting for something to come of it.
“And now a judge has made a decision that it’s unconstitutional and that the truth can’t be revealed. It just retraumatizes everybody that’s involved, including myself,” he said.
Crawford said many victims have reached out expressing their belief that the attorney general and law enforcement officials would never follow through with the investigation.
“Now we finally learn why all the secrecy,” he said.
Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL
Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com .