Other Christian institutions & contexts Catholic New Jersey, USA · 2019

New Jersey's five Catholic dioceses jointly name 188 priests credibly accused of child sexual abuse

Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

Catholic priests and deacons across New Jersey's five dioceses, diocesan bishops compiling and releasing the substantiation lists

Organization

Archdiocese of Newark, Diocese of Camden, Diocese of Trenton, Diocese of Paterson, Diocese of Metuchen

Spiritual nexus

The record concerns child sexual abuse committed under Catholic clerical and pastoral authority, disclosed through the dioceses' own internal substantiation process rather than an independent state finding; the coordinated five-diocese release and the compensation program that followed are themselves institutional acknowledgments of the scale of clerical abuse of children in the dioceses' care.

Pastoral or clerical authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2019-02-13 · coordinated diocesan disclosure

Archdiocese of Newark and Dioceses of Camden, Trenton, Paterson and Metuchen. All five New Jersey Catholic dioceses simultaneously published lists naming 188 priests and deacons deemed credibly accused of sexually abusing a minor, the state's first coordinated statewide disclosure. The dioceses subsequently ran an Independent Victim Compensation Program (closed November 2022) that paid more than $40 million to 348 victims in exchange for staying out of court.

Documented coercion mechanisms

clerical and pastoral authority
parish and school access to children
decades of internal, unpublished diocesan abuse files

Primary record

Sources

state government page official context New Jersey Office of the Attorney General, 'Clergy Abuse Task Force,' njoag.gov.: State-government page describing the Clergy Abuse Task Force established following the dioceses' 2019 disclosure and the subsequent state investigation.
survivor advocacy summary corroboration Helping Survivors, 'New Jersey Clergy Sexual Abuse' (accessed 2026).: Corroborates the February 13, 2019 joint release of 188 names across the five dioceses and the Independent Victim Compensation Program's $40 million/348-victim total before its November 2022 closure.

Related record

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