Why are clergy sex abuse investigations stalled in NJ and around US? There's a ‘playbook'

Yahoo

01-04-2025

When a Pennsylvania grand jury released the findings of a two-year investigation in 2018, it was a watershed moment in America's clergy sexual abuse scandals.
The report compiled evidence and allegations that 300 Catholic priests had abused more than 1,000 children over several decades, while bishops covered up the crimes.
The shocking revelations inspired an array of other states to promise their own reviews, including New Jersey. Within days of the Keystone State report, then-Attorney General Gurbir Grewal announced he was establishing a task force to look into allegations in the Garden State and any attempts to cover them up. About half of U.S. states announced similar plans."We owe it to the people of New Jersey to find out whether the same thing happened here," Grewal declared at a news conference.
But across the country, Catholic dioceses have found ways to trim or stall the ambitions of those efforts — including in New Jersey, where the state Supreme Court will consider a challenge to Grewal's effort in the coming weeks.
Although at least 29 states launched investigations after Pennsylvania's, only about half have reported findings, said Terry McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org, a Massachusetts nonprofit that tracks clergy abuse cases. Legal experts and victims' advocates say dioceses have employed common strategies to resist cooperating: claiming immunity, citing the confidentiality of personnel records and declaring bankruptcy, which can put some documents off limits to investigators.
In New Jersey, as reported by The Record and NorthJersey.com in February, the Catholic Diocese of Camden successfully convinced a judge to block the special grand jury that would have conducted the state investigation. The Attorney General's Office has appealed to the state Supreme Court, which is due to hear arguments in late April.
A Camden Diocese spokesman didn't immediately respond to messages seeking comment, and an attorney for the diocese declined to comment. In the past, Camden has pointed to other steps it has taken to deal with the legacy of sexually abusive priests, including an $87.5 million fund it set up to benefit survivors.
"The diocese has and remains committed to the protection of its youth," spokesman Michael Walsh said in January.
"Bishops routinely claim charitable immunity, argue that the statute of limitations bars victims' claims, and, if those strategies fail, declare bankruptcy to shield church assets and move the proceedings into Bankruptcy Court, where discovery is limited," said Timothy Lytton, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law who has studied clergy abuse cases.
"The latest addition to the bishops' playbook is quashing the grand jury through various legal maneuvers, despite all the public pledges by church leaders to be more open and transparent," said Lytton, the author of "Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sexual Abuse."
Along with New Jersey's, investigations have been delayed in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Washington state and Wisconsin, say published reports and court records.
In Massachusetts, findings about three Catholic dioceses have been kept secret for two years. State Attorney General Andrea Campbell, who inherited the investigation from a predecessor, told radio station WGBH last fall that she was awaiting a court's approval to release the report. She declined to answer a question about whether the dioceses were behind the delay.
In Washington, the Archdiocese of Seattle refused to turn over documents that it said would violate the privacy of victims. It also claimed an exemption as a religious institution. A judge sided with the archdiocese, and the attorney general is appealing.
In Wisconsin, documents were sealed after the Milwaukee Archdiocese declared bankruptcy and cited confidentiality requirements; the state is moving ahead with the probe without those records. Maryland released a report in 2023 after a protracted legal fight with church officials, but names of those accused of abuse or covering up information were redacted on a judge's orders.
The archdioceses in Boston, Milwaukee and Seattle did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Pennsylvania's grand jury went forward despite anonymous court challenges to block it, said Josh Shapiro, the attorney general who led the process and is now the state's governor. In a 2018 letter to Pope Francis, Shapiro complained that "credible reports indicate that at least two leaders of the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania ... are behind these efforts to silence the victims and avoid accountability."
The attorney general reviews are important because they carry added authority, said McKiernan, of BishopAccountability.org. "The chief law enforcement officer in the state validates the survivors' witness and confirms that clergy abuse is real," he said. "The authority of the attorney general also guarantees that the report is thorough and accurate, because the attorney general has the power to obtain documents and testimony."
State investigations have uncovered previously undisclosed cases, he added, pointing to Michigan as an example. There, the attorney general seized millions of pages of documents from seven Catholic dioceses and issued criminal charges in 11 cases, McKiernan said.
By contrast, when abuse survivors assist in an investigation and the findings are kept hidden, their sense of betrayal deepens, he said.
But others say it makes sense for dioceses to exercise their legal rights and protect the confidentiality of employees and parishioners who never intended for their information to be made public.
Martin Nussbaum, a Colorado attorney who advises and advocates for religious institutions nationally, noted that employers seldom publish their disciplinary files because there are strict laws governing the privacy of employees. For the church, there's good reason for such files to be even more protected, he said.
"The relationship between a Catholic bishop and his priest is not like a typical employer relationship," Nussbaum said. "The church expects its priests and bishops to speak with greater candor. That makes the disclosure analysis different, just as it would for other legally protected relationships like husband and wife, physician and patient, and priest and penitent."
'Most of the state investigations of Catholic dioceses,' he added, 'are unwarranted. Since 1995, there have been around one to two substantiated allegations of sexual abuse by a diocesan priest per year for dioceses that together serve 65 million people. Because the abuse in Catholic settings is almost always over 30 years earlier, these investigations result neither in prosecutions nor in children being protected. With attorneys general ignoring far greater and more recent abuse arising in other settings, one can only conclude they conduct these investigations for political purposes.'
Marie Reilly, a professor of commercial and bankruptcy law at Penn State University, added that there's nothing insidious about church attorneys seeking to avoid turning over personnel documents. "If your client gets a subpoena for records that can't normally be accessed by the public, whether they are damaging or not, you have to ask: 'Is the subpoena valid?'"
In New Jersey, Camden Diocese lawyers argued that special grand juries are intended to investigate problems with public officials and agencies, not a private entity like the Catholic Church. Superior Court Judge Peter Warshaw sided with the diocese. He also questioned the fairness of a report that could accuse scores of clergy members but, because it would not include formal criminal indictments, would not allow them to challenge evidence in court.
"The purposes for which the state seeks to use this grand jury would be fundamentally unfair to so many living and dead who would be forever accused in a document released by the court but to whom the court gave no opportunity to defend," Warshaw said in his ruling.
More: NJ Catholic diocese used secret court hearing to block investigation of clergy sex abuse
Walsh, the Camden spokesman, said in January that the question before the court was "purely a legal one" and that the diocese has instituted significant reforms to prevent abuse. They include a 2002 memorandum in which it agreed to change policies on reporting allegations and a list published in 2019 of "credibly accused" priests.
Faced with scores of lawsuits, the Camden Diocese declared bankruptcy in 2020, but it also set aside more than $87.5 million for a trust to benefit abuse survivors.
"The Diocese of Camden recognizes the serious, lifelong harms suffered by the victims of abuse by clergy members," he said, and "has been transparent throughout its Chapter 11 and all other proceedings."
But Michael Pfau, a Seattle attorney who has represented Catholic clergy abuse survivors around the country, said the first instinct of church officials is often "to protect their information and keep it from going public."
"There is a trend to only turn over documents when they are ordered by the court or grand jury, or if a settlement is reached," Pfa said. "I think that's a mistake. They are worried about scandal or lawsuits. But the church would have been better served by being fully transparent."
When church officials do turn over records, it's often with a demand that they be sealed from public view, said Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor who runs Child USA, a nonprofit that advocates for young victims of sexual abuse. Courts and attorneys general have often agreed, Hamilton said.
"The bishops now are just as recalcitrant as they were 20 years ago in letting their secrets go public," she said. "They've got corporate lawyers stonewalling and the bishops telling them to stonewall."
In New Jersey, Monsignor Kenneth Lasch, a retired priest from Paterson's Catholic Diocese, said he has long worried about the fate of the state's investigation.
"Someone doesn't want this to see the light of day. They found a legal way to not release it," he said. "Of course, they don't want this published. It works against the credibility of the church.
"But victims need to have their horror stories told," he said.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: How Catholic Church has stalled clergy sex abuse probes across NJ, US