These 3 N.J. nuns were accused of sex abuse. Here’s what we know about them.

By Kelly Heyboer
NJ Advance Media
May 28, 2019

https://www.nj.com/news/2019/05/these-3-nj-nuns-were-accused-of-sex-abuse-heres-what-we-know-about-them.html

When a law firm released a report earlier this month naming 311 Catholic clergy members from New Jersey accused of sexual misconduct there was something striking about the list-- it included women.

Three nuns from New Jersey were among the priests, monks, deacons and other clergy members listed in the report compiled by New Jersey attorney Greg Gianforcaro and Jeff Anderson & Associates, a Minnesota-based law firm that specialized in representing victims of abuse.

The law firm said it used lawsuits, settlements and news accounts to come up with its list of 311 clergy members -- far more than the 188 priests and deacons that were on a list from New Jersey’s five dioceses released in February.

None of the lists from New Jersey’s dioceses -- Newark, Metuchen, Camden, Trenton and Paterson -- have included nuns. Most nuns are overseen by their individual orders, which would probably have handled any accusations of abuse in the past.

While sexual abuse by priests has been widely publicized in recent years, sexual misconduct by nuns has been less discussed. By some informal counts, more than 100 U.S. nuns have been accused of sexual abuse over the last decade. But there has been no official list.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a group that represents religious orders, acknowledged in February that there have been nuns who have abused children in their care. The group is encouraging religious orders and institutions to reevaluate their practices and policies to prevent and report abuse.

“We encourage persons with grievances involving allegations of sexual misconduct by a woman religious to approach the individual religious congregation involved. We believe that it is at this level that true healing can begin,” said Sister Annmarie Sanders, a spokeswoman for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

Here’s what we know about the three New Jersey nuns named in the Anderson law firm report:

Shaw, a member of the Sisters of Charity, was accused of abuse by a former student at Paramus Catholic Girls High School student from Ridgewood, according to several news stories.

The nun was accused of sexually assaulting a teenage student starting in the late 1960s. Her alleged victim, Patricia Cahill, said she met Shaw when she was 15 and the nun gave her drugs and sexually abused her after she passed out. The alleged abuse continued for years, including when Cahill was an adult.

Cahill, who has since become a vocal advocate for victims of sexual abuse by nuns, did not report the abuse to the Sisters of Charity until she was in her 40s, according to the news accounts. She said she received a $70,000 settlement from the Morris Township-based order.

A review board of lay professionals and nuns investigated Cahill’s allegations in 1994 immediately after they were reported, said Donna Sartor-Halatin, a spokeswoman for the Sisters of Charity.

“Since 1994 and for the past 25 years Sister Eileen has been subject to a program of restrictions and therapy including permanent removal from ministry that she will remain subject to for the remainder of her life or as long as she is a Sister of Charity,” Sartor-Halatin told NJ Advance Media.

Shaw previously worked as principal Our Lady of Visitation School in Paramus and at St. Cecelia Elementary School in Kearny. After the abuse accusations, she worked as an administrator in a Jersey City retirement home for nuns, according to news reports.

“After extensive inpatient treatment, Sister Eileen has been confined to living with sisters. The congregation continues to support her in a restricted, confined lifestyle,” Sartor-Halatin said.

Two men filed a lawsuit in the early 2005 against the Archdiocese of Newark and the Pallottine Sisters, an order of nuns, alleging they were physically and sexually abused when they were children in the Sacred Heart Orphanage in Kearny in the 1940s.

Henry Coffey, of Colonia, and Frank Fioretti, of Florida -- who were friends at the orphanage and later became brothers-in-law -- said media reports of priest sex abuse cases triggered their memories of being beaten and sexually abused by several nuns, including one called Sister Regina, according to an account they gave to The Star-Ledger in 2009.

One of the men said Sister Regina asked him to touch her breasts when he was 14 and she sexually molested him for several years before they had sex at a summer camp, according to the lawsuit. He said he later visited her in the 1950s, when she was dying, and she apologized for physically abusing him, but did not mention the alleged sexual abuse.

The other man testified that Sister Regina used to tickle and kiss him while he was cleaning the stairs at the school, according to the court papers.

The allegations were difficult to prove. The nuns, including Sister Regina, were dead and the orphanage had been closed since the 1950s.

The Pallottine Sisters’ attorney argued at the time the case was impossible to defend because more than 60 years had passed since the alleged incidents.

The case remained in court for years. A state appellate rejected the men’s appeal in 2011, upholding a lower court’s decision to throw out the case because too many years had passed since the alleged abuse under New Jersey’s statute of limitations law.

Sister Regina’s birth name was never identified in the court papers. The Pallottine Sisters religious order, based in Orange County, N.Y., did not respond to requests to comment.

A former New Jersey resident said a nun at Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Hillside sexually abused her daughter for years in the 1960s, starting when the girl was 12.

The woman said the nun, known as Sister Andre, began paying special attention to her daughter when the girl was young and the pair eventually went on a trip down the Shore together, according to an account the mother gave to a New Orleans newspaper in 2002.

The nun and the teenager would spend evenings at the convent, until the mother said she found a letter written from the nun on her daughter’s bed describing a sexual relationship. The teenager later said the nun sexually abuser her, her mother said.

The family reported the incidents to the nun’s supervisor, who later found journals and letters describing the sexual misconduct, according to the account the mother gave the newspaper. The nun was dismissed, she said.

The family considered filing a lawsuit, but later decided it would be best to put the incident behind them.

When the story ran in 2002, the head of the Dominican Sisters of Caldwell, Sister Andre’s order, said she was not aware of any complaints against the nun and did not know what happened to her. Her legal name was not revealed.

The alleged victim committed suicide in 1989 after years of counseling to deal with her abuse, her mother told the New Orleans newspaper. The mother died in 2013.

The Dominican Sisters of Caldwell did not respond to a request to comment on the case.