The Camden Diocese has waged a secret — and successful — legal battle to block a report targeting decades of clergy abuse

Seven years ago, after New Jersey’s top prosecutor vowed to investigate decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests across the state, hundreds of victims began calling a newly established hotline and sitting with investigators to tell their stories.

Samuel Rivera of Essex County recounted how a priest had abused him as an altar boy beginning in the late 1970s, both at his parish and at a summer house in Ocean County.

Todd Kostrub spoke of how a Franciscan brother in Burlington County had sexually assaulted him for more than a decade — beginning when he was just 7 years old.

And Lara McKeever said that a priest had abused her and three of her sisters in the 1980s and 1990s, and that officials in the Newark Archdiocese had helped cover it up.

But in the years since they and more than 500 others reached out to the state attorney general’s office — hopeful that doing so might help deliver a measure of accountability to the Catholic Church — victims have been left pained by a lack of action in the investigation.

None of those who reported abuse has been called to testify before a grand jury that prosecutors wanted to convene to investigate. And the attorney general’s office has not produced the report it promised to deliver — one that New Jersey officials said would take inspiration from other states, like Pennsylvania, and publicly detail allegations of wrongdoing by priests and other church officials.

In recent weeks, newly unsealed court documents have revealed why: The Diocese of Camden has for years been waging a secret — and successful — legal battle that has blocked the investigation from moving forward.

Behind closed doors, in clandestine legal arguments and hundreds of pages of court documents previously hidden from public view, lawyers for the diocese have asked the courts to block prosecutors from preparing a grand jury report focusing on the church.

They say New Jersey law does not allow such reports to detail allegations against private institutions that cannot be prosecuted — either because of the statute of limitations or issues with evidence — but that state authorities nevertheless want to make public.

In New Jersey, church attorney Lloyd Levinson wrote in documents unsealed by the state Supreme Court last month, such reports must focus on alleged crimes or wrongdoing by government officials or agencies.

State law, he said, is “abundantly clear: a grand jury is not authorized to return a presentment against the Roman Catholic Church relating to decades-old allegations of clergy abuse.”

Two courts have so far agreed — and forbidden prosecutors from impaneling a special grand jury to begin their probe.

After a Pennsylvania grand jury concluded that top Roman Catholic leaders in the state covered up decades of child sex abuse involving more than 1,000 victims and hundreds of priests, former New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said, “We owe it to the people of New Jersey to find out whether the same thing happened here.”

And just as vigorously, lawyers for the church have fought back.

Church officials say their position is purely a legal one — that they do not oppose a grand jury investigation of crimes by priests. Their opposition to the attorney general’s effort, they say, centers solely on the office’s stated intent to assemble a more wide-ranging report, including details of cases that prosecutors can’t or won’t charge.

Still, given the Camden Diocese’s long and troubled history with abuse by clergy — including a 2022 bankruptcy settlement in which it agreed to pay $87.5 million to resolve hundreds of sex-abuse lawsuits — many victims have been left outraged by the church’s role in seeking to effectively stymie the investigation.

“I was getting frustrated, definitely frustrated about the amount of time it’s taken for them to do anything,” said Rivera, now 59.

Mark Crawford, the New Jersey director for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said it’s been “really difficult” for people who have experienced abuse to watch the promised investigation stall. Crawford, 62, called into the attorney general’s hotline to report being abused as a boy by a Newark priest, and also encouraged other survivors to speak to investigators.

“It’s a roller-coaster ride,” he said. ”Every time you think, ‘Gee, this is it. It’s going to happen. It’s going to get done,’ for whatever reason, then nothing, nothing, nothing.”

First Assistant Attorney General Lyndsay Ruotolo said the office’s commitment to the investigation “has never wavered” and that the goal has always been “to allow the grand jury, as the conscience of our community, to make recommendations to ensure widespread abuse by clergy can never happen again.”

How or if that effort is allowed to move forward will soon be a decision for the state’s Supreme Court. On Monday, the court will hear arguments from the church and the attorney general’s office on whether prosecutors should be allowed to convene a grand jury, and, if so, whether the panel should be permitted to produce a presentment after reviewing evidence and hearing testimony.

Camden Bishop Joseph Andrew Williams declined to comment, as did former Bishop Dennis J. Sullivan, who retired in mid-March. And church officials declined to say how much it has spent on legal fees fighting the case over the years.

In a statement, spokesperson Michael Walsh said the diocese “recognizes the serious, lifelong harms suffered by the victims of abuse by clergy members,” and added that it has complied for more than 20 years with a statewide agreement requiring church officials to report any potential crimes to prosecutors.

“The Diocese has and remains committed to the protection of its youth,” he said.

Others say the Catholic Church in New Jersey is overdue for a public reckoning.

Kostrub, now 60, first reported being abused by a Franciscan brother to police in the 1990s. The man who assaulted him later admitted his actions to police and confessed that he had abused several other victims as well, according to police documents obtained by The Inquirer. But he was never prosecuted, in part because of the statute of limitations.

The Camden Diocese’s effort to thwart a comprehensive grand jury report on sex abuse in the state’s five dioceses, Kostrub said, feels like another attempt to avoid accountability.

“I was half my age when I started [having] this thirst for justice,” he said. “I’m yet to taste it.”

The idea for a statewide grand jury investigation into clergy abuse was sparked in 2018, after then-Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro released a sweeping report accusing hundreds of Catholic priests of sexually abusing more than 1,000 children across the state.

Shapiro’s counterpart in New Jersey, Grewal, said he wanted to conduct a similar inquiry. He created a Clergy Abuse Task Force and appointed a former high-ranking North Jersey prosecutor to lead it.

And in a 2019 news release, his office said the Church’s “institutional abuses will be the subject of a state grand jury presentment and report.”

Kostrub, among others, was hopeful.

He said he was one of the first callers to the task force’s telephone hotline, a tool for prosecutors to gather tips and information about potential witnesses.

“I don’t know anybody that [didn’t] think long and hard before they picked up that phone,” Kostrub said. “Even me, and I’m a very vocal advocate. I thought to myself: Do I want to tell this story one more time?” He said he was on the phone for three hours.

Rivera called in 2019, then participated in two phone interviews with the prosecutors’ offices in the two counties in which he said he was abused.

Greg Gianforcaro, a lawyer who has represented victims of clergy abuse, said such discussions can be “extremely difficult” for survivors to go through. But the victims who reached out to the task force, Gianforcaro said, “were willing to do this, and they were anxious to do it. … They felt as though justice needed to prevail, justice would prevail, and that the Catholic Church in New Jersey would have to answer for what they did.”

Before long, however, the Camden Diocese sprang into action.

In 2021, it filed a sealed motion saying Grewal’s stated end goal — a grand jury presentment — was not permitted under state law because such documents in New Jersey must target misconduct by government agencies or officials.

In addition, the church argued that a 2002 agreement between the state and its Catholic dioceses that requires church officials to report allegations of abuse to county prosecutors had “eradicated” the issue.

“The State has no evidence that clergy sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church is a contemporary problem, because it is not,” church lawyers wrote, later adding: “For 23 years, the problem of clergy sexual abuse has ceased to exist in the Diocese.”

In addition, they said, a presentment was simply unnecessary: “The public is already fully aware of the history of clergy sexual abuse allegations, negating the need for a grand jury to call attention to the issue.”

To victims and advocates like Crawford, the suggestion that clergy abuse is not a contemporary problem is a “blatant lie.” It often takes abuse survivors years or even decades to speak up, Crawford said, making it impossible — and wrong — to say that such abuse has ended.

“I know men who in their 80s, and very recently, have come forward to tell me that they were abused 50, 60, 70 years ago when they were little, and they’re telling me for the first time,” he said. “They’ve never told anybody.”

Others say the church’s efforts to block a report are an attempt to protect the institution at the expense of the welfare of children.

“Why are they fighting it?” asked McKeever, 52, who said she and her sisters were sexually assaulted by a priest decades ago. “Why is Camden fighting it? Why don’t they want this transparency and this healing? Well, because more victims are going to come out, like lots more.”

The Camden diocese, which serves nearly half a million Catholics in Atlantic, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem Counties, has faced — and in many cases, settled — abuse-related lawsuits for decades.

And in 2020, the diocese filed for bankruptcy protection after the state passed a law allowing victims of decades-old sexual abuse new opportunities to sue.

It ultimately agreed to pay about 300 people a combined $87.5 million — one of the largest cash settlements involving the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. The terms of some of those settlements were agreed to in secret.

The diocese maintains a list on its website of 61 credibly accused priests, all of whom the church said are either dead or no longer in ministry.

Crawford, the advocate, said the list — which only includes diocesan priests and not other abusive clergy — is incomplete and lacking in detail.

In court, the diocese’s legal arguments against the attorney general’s proposed grand jury presentment have proven persuasive.

In May 2023, Mercer County Superior Court Judge Peter Warshaw agreed that such reports must focus on government officials or agencies, saying: “The priests are not public officials and the Catholic Church is not a public entity, no matter how expansive a definition of the term ‘public’ is contemplated.”

He also said such a presentment would accuse people of criminal conduct — in documents bearing the government’s seal — without giving them a meaningful avenue to respond. And he barred prosecutors from even impaneling a special grand jury, saying it would be a waste of time and resources if the intended outcome was not legally permitted.

“The State is absolutely correct in arguing that the issue of sexual abuse by clergy members is vitally important,” Warshaw said. “But it is not for well-intentioned prosecutors to use the court’s Grand Jury to write a history which can never be meaningfully disputed.”

The attorney general’s office appealed, and last June, an appellate court affirmed Warshaw’s decision.

Prosecutors challenged that outcome, and last month, the state Supreme Court said it would hear arguments in the case. The high court also ordered all documents in the long-running secret legal matter unsealed — a decision prosecutors applauded.

“Now that this case has been made public for the first time in this yearslong dispute, victims and survivors will have an opportunity to make their voices heard — and to speak to the real harms that we have never lost sight of,” said Ruotolo, the first assistant attorney general who is leading the effort.

Prosecutors believe the rulings barring them from moving forward are flawed for several reasons.

First, they said in court documents, state law allows grand juries to produce presentments on matters of public interest — and not just government wrongdoing.

“For centuries, the grand jury’s presentment power has been a tool to voice the public conscience, to learn from previous harms, and to propose reforms,” they wrote. “And the public can be equally harmed regardless of whether the underlying source of the harm is a government actor.”

Gianforcaro, the lawyer who has represented clergy abuse victims, agrees. “One of the most fundamental rights that exists is for the protection of children, and if there are members of the clergy who have in the past been accused of abusing children, and who are still alive, I think the public has every right to know who these people are and what the current situation is,” he said.

The attorney general’s office also said Warshaw’s order was premature because it came before a presentment had even been produced.

“Review of a hypothetical presentment is hopelessly speculative, and it requires courts to engage in unjustified assumptions regarding the contents of the report,” lawyers for the office wrote.

The Supreme Court will hear from both sides on Monday and will likely issue a decision in several months.