MORRISTOWN (NJ)
NorthJersey.com [Woodland Park NJ]
September 25, 2025
By William Westhoven, Morristown Daily Record
Attorneys for the Delbarton School began presenting witnesses on Sept. 24 in defense of the landmark civil lawsuit targeting the all-boys’ prep school, the order of Benedictine Catholic brothers that runs it and a former priest accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old sophomore in 1976.
Two witnesses — including current Headmaster Rev. Michael Tidd — were quizzed at length about the history of child sexual abuse policies, both at Delbarton and at U.S. schools in general. Tidd and David Wolowitz, a legal expert on the subject, testified that procedures and training to avoid such incidents essentially did not exist at the time the student said he was molested by his teacher and mentor, the Rev. Richard Lott.
“What should be done now was not done then,” Wolowitz told the jury at the Morris County Courthouse.
The lawsuit brought by the student, identified only as “T.M.” to protect his privacy, is the first to reach trial among 39 abuse cases involving Delbarton staff. It’s also the first clergy abuse suit against the Catholic Church to reach a courtroom in New Jersey, where hundreds such cases are pending.
Lott, Delbarton and its connected monastery, St. Mary’s Abbey, all named as defendants, have denied wrongdoing.
Wolowitz told the eight-person jury that the concepts of establishing “boundaries” between teachers and students, and the notion of abusers “grooming” their victims barely existed well into the 1970s. He spoke of one academic peer advocating the issue at the time who was ostracized by her fellows and “frustrated that the topic was taboo.”
He likened the ignorance of the time about child sex abuse to other safety measures now taken for granted that were ignored a half-century ago: seat belts, bicycle safety helmets and advising pregnant women not to smoke or drink.
“What seems obvious now, was not then,” Wolowitz said. He also recalled smoking lounges for high school students in the 1970s and noted YMCA pools required boys and men to swim naked into the 1960s, as did some public high schools and universities into the ’70s.
Even in the late 1970s, when the public was first beginning to recognize the problem of child sex abuse, experts still did not recognize churches and schools as locations of risk, Wolowitz testified. Education programs, instead, focused the public on incest and “stranger danger” as the most likely red flags. Perpetrators were depicted as wearing trench coats, and children were urged not to accept car rides from strangers.
Meanwhile, at private schools, especially boarding schools like Delbarton, teachers were often encouraged to visit with students in dorms and giving them car rides was considered a proper courtesy. “It was common practice,” Wolowitz said.
Headmaster: ‘No policies in place’ in 1977
Tidd, the headmaster, qualified his testimony by noting he was hired as a teacher in 2008, elevated to headmaster in 2018 and had no association with Delbarton in the 1970s. But as the institution’s current leader, and with the school facing dozens of additional sex-abuse accusations, he has researched Delbarton’s history on the subject.
As of 1977, Tidd said, “no policies were in place at all related to sex abuse.”
He also testified to the radical change “in how we deal with sex abuse,” which came when the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, reacting to widespread allegations of clergy sex abuse in 2004, published a charter of Essential Norms.
Michael Geibelson, the lead attorney for plaintiff T.M., objected to the relevance of much of the testimony about policies or practices decades earlier.
He asked Wolowitz if a teacher performing fellatio or sodomy on a student was “as wrong then as it is today?” Wolowitz agreed it was, and agreed if a teacher were found to have committed those acts, he would have taken steps to “get rid of them,” as Geibelson put it.
Tidd also confirmed that two monks accused of sex abuse still live on the Delbarton campus. Tidd said they are both in their 70s, under supervision and with limited physical mobility, and barred from the school campus and buildings.
He explained that once someone commits to the order, and wishes to stay, “We can’t simply throw them out.” Tidd also suggested that if they were indeed dangerous, it was probably “better to have them stay with us” rather than be released to the public.
More: Delbarton School faces first sex abuse trial in Morristown next week. Many more may follow
Alleged victim stays to observe
T.M. concluded his testimony on Sept. 22 but has continued to attend the daily trial sessions in the Morristown courtroom. Testimony is expected to continue on Sept. 25, then break for the weekend.
The gallery included several of his supporters, including others who say they were abused by clergy members, some at Delbarton.
T.M.’s testimony recounted the events of his alleged assault, which he says occurred after Lott took him to an off-campus New Year’s Eve party in 1975. There, T.M. said, Lott plied him with alcohol and then brought him back to the cleric’s quarters in a campus maintenance barn, where he abused him.
The trauma from that night “follows me around like a dark cloud,” T.M. testified.