They were promised an accounting of the sins of priests. Years later, they’re still waiting.

NEWARK (NJ)
Star-Ledger [Newark NJ]

April 24, 2022

By Ted Sherman

Victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy say they are still waiting for the state to fulfill its promise of a decades-long lookback investigating allegations of predators in the church. 

Todd Kostrub has been awaiting a reckoning for nearly four years.

New Jersey officials raised his hopes in September 2018, when they announced the creation of a special task force to investigate decades-old allegations of sexual abuse by members of the clergy that had long been kept secret.

Sparked by a Pennsylvania grand jury report that had graphically detailed the abuse by priests who had preyed upon children in that state for decades, then-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal named former acting Essex County Prosecutor Robert D. Laurino to head the investigation. The task force would be given subpoena power through a grand jury to compel testimony and demand the production of documents from the state’s five Catholic dioceses.

“We owe it to the people of New Jersey to find out whether the same thing happened here,” declared Grewal, days after the shocking revelations in Pennsylvania. “If it did, we will take action against those responsible.”

Kostrub, who said he had been abused as a young boy and into his teen years by a Franciscan brother at Holy Assumption School in Roebling, the historic steel mill town on the Delaware River where he grew up, saw it as a promise that would finally give him closure.

Now he wonders whatever became of that pledge.

“All the victims in New Jersey were hoping that after literally decades of pressure, there would be a release of some kind of list of perpetrators,” he said. “They asked people to come forward. I did. I was one of hundreds who came forward. Since then, nothing.”

Grand jury investigations are always kept confidential by law enforcement and the Attorney General’s office won’t say anything about whether a grand jury was ever called. But abuse victims like Kostrub and others say they were never called to testify, nor was anyone else they know — making it unlikely that a grand jury was ever empaneled.

Mark Crawford, another victim of abuse and state director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said hundreds have come forward to give testimony and have been told nothing.

“We were led to believe that a no-holds-barred report would be released,” said Crawford. Now, he said, many believe nothing is going to come of it.

“There are many waiting to see the truth revealed,” he said. “They want accountability.”

He noted the recent $87.5 million settlement with abuse victims by the Diocese of Camden included provisions that the diocese agreed to release all it knows about sexual predators, which he expected that to mean allegations or charges not just against clergy, but those in the religious orders within the diocese.

“The church only admits what it has to,” said Crawford in speaking about why the state investigation was “important and necessary.”

A spokesman for the Attorney General’s office said the Clergy Abuse Task Force remains active and “committed to seeking justice for victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy in New Jersey.” A clergy abuse hotline set up in 2018 — (855) 363-6548 — continues to be answered around the clock, he said.

That investigation so far, though, has led to just three clergy members being criminally charged, officials disclosed — with only one involving charges from the past.

They included disgraced New Jersey priest Thomas Ganley of Phillipsburg, who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a girl who had been a member of a youth group he led at St. Ceclia’s Church in Iselin in the 1990s.

His case was the first prosecuted after the start of the Attorney General’s task force and he was ultimately was sentenced to a four-year prison sentence.

More recently, a Jersey City priest, Donato Cabardo of St. Paul of the Cross Church, was charged in 2020 with criminal sexual contact and harassment for groping a woman who worked at the church. Officials said the Archdiocese of Newark initially received the complaint from the victim, who accused the cleric of unwanted kisses, hugs, touching of her breasts and pressing his groin against her.

The matter was forwarded it to the task force for investigation. That same year, Cabardo entered into the pre-trial intervention program.

Last year, a former Catholic school chaplain in Summit who had been placed on leave following allegations of misconduct was charged with child endangerment, according to the Attorney General’s office. Investigators said Rev. Salvatore DiStefano of Oratory Preparatory School of Summit allegedly provided drugs to underage children, had inappropriate conversations with the teenagers in his care about sex and masturbation, and took steps to cover up his activities.

“To date, our Clergy Abuse Hotline has received over 500 calls from individuals reporting abuse by clergy members, and continues to receive new allegations,” the Attorney General’s office said in a statement. “The task force will continue to devote the time and investigative resources to these matters for as long as it takes to see each one fully investigated.”

The explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report that led to the New Jersey task force had revealed monstrous accounts of hundreds of priests who preyed on more than 1,000 children.

“Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades,” said the report, which described in detail the criminal abuse of children.

Grewal later told the Star-Ledger Editorial Board that the state would be publishing a report as well, following New Jersey’s own investigation.

“The people of this state have a right to know,” the attorney general said at the time.

So far, there has been no report. And despite the Attorney General’s assurances that the investigation remained ongoing, advocates including Crawford say they have lost faith.

“Ongoing isn’t good enough,” said Crawford, the SNAP director. “It has been ongoing. Why is it taking so long? There’s a lot that’s been kept secret for too long.”

John Bellocchio — a former Catholic schoolteacher and principal and another SNAP member who alleged in a lawsuit that former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick sexually assaulted him when he had served as Archbishop of the Newark Archdiocese — said the State Commission of Investigation should get involved.

“We want there to be a public accounting of the collusion between state, municipal and county government and the church,” he said. “Hundreds of victims have been brushed off, ignored by the Clergy Sexual Abuse Task Force.”

The SCI, an independent watchdog agency that examines crime, corruption, waste and fraud in New Jersey, is not a law enforcement organization and reports to the Legislature.

“We would like the SCI to investigate and autopsy the historical aspect of this situation, from 1950-2000,” said Bellocchio. “It is not in anyone’s interest nor desire to have any current or potential criminal investigation turned over to SCI — that belongs to the criminal justice system. Rather, this is a historical lookback at what transpired, which is entirely the remit of SCI. That history must be rooted out of the darkness.”

An SCI spokeswoman declined comment.

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https://www.nj.com/news/2022/04/they-were-promised-an-accounting-of-the-sins-of-priests-years-later-theyre-still-waiting.html