NEWARK (NJ)
New York Post [New York NY]
November 17, 2025
By Peter Senzamici
Seton Hall University has been ordered to release a massive 20,000-page internal probe it conducted on clergy sex abuse at the Catholic school — a report it spent years hiding from survivors.
The findings accuse current Seton Hall President Monsignor Joseph Reilly of failing to properly investigate claims of sexual abuse by students of the New Jersey school, which technically violates the federal Title IX funding law, based on leaks first reported by Politico.
Essex County Judge Avion Benjamin ruled that the report, compiled by law firm Latham & Watkins in 2019 was not privileged information — and has given the university 30 days to release it.
“There is a legitimate need for the evidence,” Benjamin said. “The evidence is material and relevant.”
Seton Hall had previously fought against its release despite repeated calls to do so.
Survivors claimed victory Monday.
“For far too long, survivors and the public have been denied access to information that is essential for truth, accountability, and healing,” said Mark Crawford, state director of New Jersey’s Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
“The University and the archdiocese’s attempt to conceal this report will not stand and Judge Benjamin has made it so.”
Lawyers in the 450-plaintiff sex abuse lawsuit against Seton Hall — where tuition now runs more than $50,000 a year — and the Archdiocese of Newark said they had no idea that Reilly, along with 11 others, was implicated in the so-called Latham Report until details surfaced last December in Politico.
The report examining sexual abuse at the school was first commissioned in 2018 following allegations that Theodore McCarrick, the ex-archbishop of Newark, had sexually abused seminarians at Seton Hall over decades.
McCarrick — who was expelled from the priesthood in 2019 — was accused by at least 10 victims, including one who claimed in a lawsuit last year that he ran a sex abuse ring out of his Sea Girt beach house.
The disgraced archbishop died earlier this year at 94.
While a summary of the report was released by the school, other aspects of it were never made public, including Reilly’s alleged Title IX violations, which were similar to the violations that took down disgraced former Penn State football legend Joe Paterno.
Last spring, Benjamin ruled that Seton Hall violated discovery orders when it declined to produce all documents relating to the abuse claims.
The board at the ritzy school — which has matriculated a bevy of elites including former governors, congressmembers and where Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito taught law as an adjunct — still voted Reilly into the top post, even though it was aware of the report recommending he not hold any leadership positions, according to Politico.
Cardinal Joseph Tobin and the board installed Reilly in 2023 as a replacement to ex-president Joseph Nyre, who was ousted as retaliation for attempting to clean up the school, according to a still pending lawsuit.
That same board included former New Jersey first lady Mary Pat Christie, who stepped down this summer amid the controversy, Politico reported.
“Seton Hall University and the Archdiocese of Newark cannot continue ‘business as usual’ while systemic failures remain concealed,” Crawford said.
“Survivors of clergy abuse, especially those harmed within one of the nation’s most prominent Catholic institutions, deserve the truth—not delays, denials, or quiet reassurances.”
Clergy sex abuse survivors in New Jersey notched another win last month, when a victim at the neighboring Benedictine school Delbarton won a $5 million jury verdict.
Neither Seton Hall, the Archdiocese of Newark or their attorneys replied to The Post’s requests for comment.