NEWARK (NJ)
NorthJersey.com [Woodland Park NJ]
February 17, 2025
By Bill Crane Jr.
I am a survivor of childhood clergy sexual abuse from two priests in New Jersey. In 2002, I attended the bishops’ conference in Dallas, Texas at which hundreds of Catholic officials — facing massive public and parishioner pressure due to a flood of abuse and cover-up cases — grudgingly adopted some “reforms.”
They enacted the so-called Dallas Charter, which pledged to dramatically change how the church handled these widespread and devastating crimes.
The document, affirmed by virtually every U.S. bishop, is chock full of encouraging phrases and sweeping promises, like “disciplining offenders,” “cooperating with civil authorities,” “creating a safe environment for children and young people,” “providing for accountability” and more.
My initial reaction was hopeful. I recall thinking, “Now at last we have some guidelines and bylaws to hold those in authority accountable.”
Unfortunately, my optimism was soon shattered, as New Jersey bishops Ted McCarrick, Frank Rodimer, John Myers, Joseph Tobin, Joseph Galante and Dennis Sullivan repeatedly violated both the letter and the spirit of the Charter.
Through the aid of shrewd and ruthless lawyers, church officials continued (and continue to this day) to be as secretive as possible, endangering vulnerable children and intimidating wounded victims, sometimes to the breaking point. (In my experience, being sodomized by a priest was actually less awful than being cross-examined by church attorneys like Michael Critchley, who use the same logic as Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg trials, who proclaimed, “I was just doing my job.”)
So what looked like a very belated step in the right direction, towards ‘openness and transparency’ and children’s safety, turned out to be a band aid on a deep, infected and still oozing wound. The Charter was a savvy public relations maneuver, designed NOT to bring reform, but to deceive the flock into believing that this rigid, centuries old, all male monarchy was willing and able to really change.
Many others I’ve spoken with — victims, Catholics, parents — feel just as betrayed as I do.
2018’s hopes in New Jersey have been dashed in 2025
But then in 2018, we saw another hopeful move. In the wake of startling revelations of long standing abuses and cover ups by then-Cardinal McCarrick, New Jersey’s attorney general proudly launched the first statewide investigation into this scandal.
At the time, then-acting New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said “No person is above the law and no institution is immune from accountability.”
A hotline was established and I was among an estimated 750 victims who reported their suffering. Finally, we were talking with seasoned law enforcement professionals who were taking us seriously. Their mission was to compile a complete exhaustive index of all the clergy abuse in New Jersey and unveil these sordid crimes once and for all so that they might never be repeated.
After almost seven years of waiting anxiously for the task force’s report to be released, victims and their families have been betrayed again. We recently learned that church officials have successfully won another legal battle which will likely prevent the disclosures the bishops promised, the AG sought and the public needs if kids are to be protected from proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting clerics.
Judges, at both the trial and appellate level, have ruled that the attorney general’s investigation was unconstitutional.
For me and many other victims, it’s like waking up in the movie “Groundhog’s Day” and finding that we’re still very far from the closure, validation and healing we so deeply deserve.
Perhaps worse, parents and parishioners are still very far from knowing who all the predator priests are, so they can keep their boys and girls away from them.
NorthJersey.com did an amazing job chronicling the events that took place behind closed doors, so there is no need to recount those details here. The gist of all the legal wrangling is that New Jersey Superior Court Judge Peter Warshaw essentially said that the Catholic hierarchy is still the only institution in the state that is above the law.
The judge wrote that “the AG has no business in writing this history which can never be meaningfully disputed.” Adding insult to injury, he claimed that the process could amount to the judicial version of a “hit-and-run.”
But the people who are actually being run over are the still-struggling victims, once as youngsters by criminal clerics and again as adults by insensitive judges.
And New Jersey moms and dads who want to keep their families safe are also being run over now, because they will likely never learn the identities of all the New Jersey clerics who committed or concealed these heinous crimes and may do so again.
There’s one bright spot here: At least the shrewd legal moves by New Jersey Catholic officials to keep their ugly secrets hidden have finally been exposed.
But to end this non-stop crisis, the New Jersey Superior Court must protect kids, expose molesters and deter coverups by overturning the lower courts and siding with the vulnerable and wounded, not the reckless and callous.
Bill Crane Jr. is a clergy abuse survivor, a victims advocate, member of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and creator of the Millstone Memorial, a nationally recognized monument dedicated to clergy sexual abuse survivors located in Mendham, New Jersey.