Catholic Church & Catholic Schools

In 2020, the Catholic dioceses of Newark, Paterson, Trenton, and Metuchen agreed to pay $87.5 million to more than 300 survivors of clergy sexual abuse, including Catholic schools operated by the diocese. Individual payouts ranging from hundreds of thousands to several million dollars depending on the severity and duration of the abuse.

In 2016, the Delbarton School, a Benedictine boarding school in Morristown, faced multiple lawsuits alleging abuse by monks and teachers. By 2019, the school had settled at least 30 lawsuits, with settlement amounts confidential but widely reported in the seven-figure range for individual cases.

Private Schools

Private day schools have faced lawsuits over teacher and staff misconduct. While many settlements remain confidential, payouts have reached into the millions of dollars, especially where administrators failed to remove repeat offenders.

Public Schools

New Jersey public school districts have been held liable in several high-profile cases. In 2012, Plainfield Public Schools settled claims for $2.75 million after a teacher abused multiple students. Other districts have also reached six-and seven-figure settlements to resolve survivor lawsuits.

Survivors of sexual abuse deserve justice, accountability, and compensation. Institutions that failed to protect children, students, or vulnerable individuals must be held responsible. Whether the abuse occurred in a religious setting, school, or other organization, survivors now have the ability to come forward under New Jersey law. Our legal team is dedicated to helping survivors pursue claims against the powerful institutions that enabled abuse.

Delbarton School, the elite Benedictine boys’ school in Morristown, New Jersey, has been at the center of clergy-abuse allegations for more than a decade, with claims stretching back to the late 1960s. The school and its monastic affiliate, St. Mary’s Abbey, publicly acknowledged in a July 20, 2018 letter to the community that thirty people had reported being sexually abused between 1968 and 1999 by thirteen present or former monks and one retired lay faculty member. In that same communication, the abbot and headmaster apologized and said accused monks who remained in the community had been removed from ministry and barred from unsupervised contact with minors.

The 2018 letter also disclosed that, by that time, eight civil cases had been settled and seven others were pending. Years earlier, in 2014, the school and abbey settled a suit brought by alumnus William Wolfe and released him from a 1988 confidentiality agreement, a step that allowed his account of abuse to become public and helped spur other survivors to come forward. New Jersey’s revival window under the Child Sexual Abuse Act opened the way for additional litigation. In September 2020, another survivor filed suit against Delbarton School and the Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey alleging abuse while he was a student; advocates simultaneously reported multiple new complaints naming monks and, in at least one instance, a lay teacher. These filings landed alongside long-public allegations against former monk Timothy Brennan, who had been criminally convicted in 1987 for abusing a Delbarton student.