More than 850 sexual abuse lawsuits have been filed as deadline approaches for past claims – NJ.com

More than 40 years after a 15-year-old boy was reportedly sexually abused by the Rev. John Capparelli, the alleged victim filed a lawsuit in Essex County Superior Court against the Archdiocese of Newark and the church where the disgraced, defrocked priest — who was murdered in 2019 — once served.

The plaintiff in the case, not identified by name, spoke of being raised in a devout Catholic family and participating in youth and church activities at Holy Trinity Church in Westfield, before ultimately becoming a victim to what was described only as “unpermitted sexual contact.”

It is just one of hundreds of civil lawsuits that have been filed in New Jersey since the state opened a two-year window that greatly extended the amount of time victims of sexual abuse had to sue.

And now, that window is closing. At the end of the month, a two-year extension allowing such lawsuits on decades-old allegations comes to an end.

Advocates, however, say the COVID pandemic has made it difficult for victims to meet with attorneys and build their cases and have called for more time to allow others to seek justice.

“The pandemic closed our courts for some time and it delayed in many ways the statewide investigation of the five Catholic Dioceses in New Jersey,” said Mark Crawford, a clergy abuse survivor and state leader of SNAP — Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

The New Jersey law, passed in 2019 and signed by Gov. Phil Murphy, waived the statute of limitations to sue under a 24-month time period ending on Nov. 30, 2021. The law also allowed adults who were assaulted as children to file civil suits until they turn 55, or seven years after they discover that they were abused. It targeted not only individuals who allegedly committed sexual assault, but the churches, athletic organizations, schools and community organizations for whom they had worked.

Since it took effect, 880 cases involving individuals with claims that would have been time barred but for the new law have been filed through Sept. 30, according to the state Administrative Office of the Courts. Most of those cases, 62.2%, named a cleric and/or religious institution as a defendant. Schools accounted for 15.5% of the lawsuits and the Boy Scouts of America was named in 11.3% of the cases.

State Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, who championed the legislation despite years of pushback, said those numbers should be much higher, and said the window for filing civil lawsuits should stay open.

“It should be extended, but I don’t know if it can be done without legislation,” he observed of the current filing deadline. “It’s not an issue that’s been at the forefront.”

The Murphy administration expressed its support of such a move.

“Gov. Murphy believes that victims of sexual assault should be able to seek justice. He is open to working with the Legislature to extend the filing period contained in the New Jersey Child Victims Act,” said spokeswoman Alyana Alfaro.

CHILD USA, a nonprofit organization that tracks such legislation, said 24 states, along with Washington D.C., and Guam, have windows similar to New Jersey’s that gave the opportunity to file child sex abuse claims that otherwise would have been blocked as a result of statute of limitations laws. Some, including California Delaware, Hawaii, and New York, later extended those windows, or reopened them.

New York, for example, originally had a 1-year window that opened in 2019, a few months before New Jersey’s window opened. Lawmakers extended that window last year because of the pandemic and the resulting court closures.

According to CHILD USA, 10,857 abuse cases have been filed in New York under the law.

Attorney Gregory Gianforcaro of Phillipsburg, who has represented hundreds of people alleging abuse by members of the clergy, is well aware of the approaching deadline. He said he has been filing new civil cases on almost a daily basis before the law expires and expects other law firms will also be heading into court in anticipation of the rapidly approaching cutoff date.

“In the past 2 weeks, my office has filed well over 80 cases — all clergy abuse cases,” Gianforcaro said. Many more, he believes, may never come to light because of the approaching deadline and because there are still some who remain reluctant to come forward.

Among the high profile cases that have filed under the extension include allegations against former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who has been repeatedly accused of abuse in connection with incidents dating back to when he was the Newark archbishop, and even before when he served as bishop of the Metuchen Diocese.

In one of those lawsuits, attorneys for an unnamed victim charged that the individual they named only as “Doe 14″ had been groomed for a role in what they called a “sex ring” involving McCarrick. They charged other priests served as “procurers” to bring victims to McCarrick at a beach house, where he assigned sleeping arrangements, choosing his victims from the boys, seminarians and clerics, and that they were paired with adult clerics.

McCarrick, who was defrocked by the Catholic Church in 2019, is facing more serious criminal charges in Massachusetts, where earlier this year he was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy during a wedding reception in the 1970s — the first time the ex-Catholic Church official has ever faced criminal charges.

The lawsuits being filed in New Jersey as the deadline draws nearer, meanwhile, are not isolated to allegations of abuse by the clergy.

A Middlesex County man filed a lawsuit just late last month against two private schools, a day camp and the estate of a teacher he claims sexually abused him four decades ago. The man, whose name is not disclosed in court papers, alleges a teacher molested him repeatedly during the 1981-1982 school year, beginning when the student was 8 years old.

The lawsuit filed last month on behalf of the unidentified victim involving Capparelli, the former priest from Westfield, was among the cases filed recently by Gianforcaro. The lawyer wrote in his filing against the Newark Archdiocese that “the culture of the Catholic Church created pressure…not to report the abuse.”

The Archdiocese said it would be inappropriate to comment on matters in litigation.

“But it is important to note that the Archdiocese of Newark remains fully committed to transparency and to our long-standing programs to protect the faithful and will continue to work with victims, their legal representatives and law enforcement authorities in an ongoing effort to resolve allegations and bring closure to victims,” said spokeswoman Maria Margiotta.

That court filing provided sparse details, but Capparelli, who was suspended in 1992 and eventually defrocked by the Catholic Church, allegedly spent decades organizing wrestling matches for young boys and teenagers in church basements and youth clubs. He was forced the leave ministry after some of the boys alleged he violently groped them during the “submission matches” and sexually assaulted them when they were alone with him in churches, at camps and on vacations.

Nearly two decades later, a 2011 investigation by The Star-Ledger revealed he was working as a public school math teacher in Newark, in a report detailing the past allegations of abuse. The ex-priest, who denied the charges and was never prosecuted, voluntarily surrendered his New Jersey teaching licenses, eventually left New Jersey and moved to Henderson, Nevada, where he was found shot in the head in March 2019.

Police say his killer had responded through an online Craigslist ad that Capparelli placed seeking men to wrestle in his house in “submission matches.”

The case has yet to go to trial.

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Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL.