HACKENSACK (NJ)
North Jersey Record
Dec. 1, 2019
By Abbott Koloff
The first wave of lawsuits was filed Sunday under a new state law that opened the way for perhaps hundreds of people to bring sex abuse claims against the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America and other institutions.
They included a new accuser saying in court papers that he was abused as a child growing up in Hackensack by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, once one of the most powerful leaders in the U.S. Catholic Church. McCarrick was defrocked earlier this year amid allegations that he sexually abused minors and harassed adult seminarians.
Other lawsuits named a New Brunswick priest who had not been publicly accused before Sunday and a Paterson priest who had been investigated for alleged abuse years ago and then reinstated.
Those were the first of at least 20 accusations expected to be made against clergy members who were not on a list of nearly 200 credibly-accused clerics released by New Jersey’s five Catholic dioceses earlier this year, based on a survey of more than a half a dozen law firms.
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