May 08, 2025
Jim Walsh/USA TODAY NETWORK
The Catholic Diocese of Camden is ending its attempt to prevent prosecutors from convening a grand jury to investigate clergy abuse.
The Catholic Diocese of Camden has abandoned its attempt to prevent state prosecutors from convening a grand jury to investigate clergy abuse, an unexpected move that comes just a week after the New Jersey Supreme Court heard heated arguments on the matter.
Bishop Joseph A. Williams, in a Tuesday letter to parishioners, said he met last Thursday with the diocese's trustees and other leaders, and they unanimously agreed to end their seven-year battle to prevent the state Office of the Attorney General from presenting the findings of its clergy abuse task force to a grand jury. State attorneys had hoped grand jurors would issue a presentment, in which they'd publicly condemn abusive priests and church leaders who covered up abuse and recommend reforms to prevent such harms from happening again.
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The battle had been waged in secret, since diocesan lawyers years ago successfully persuaded judges to seal all case records. But the fight came to light earlier this year, when the state's top court agreed to hear the case and ordered some records unsealed.
Williams, who became bishop of Camden in March, said dropping the diocese's legal fight should signal to abuse victims that the church wants to "win their trust, restore their faith, and, God willing, someday find them back in the communion of friendship and worship within the Church."
"The survivors are Church," Williams wrote. "There is no 'us' and 'them' in this difficult reckoning of our recent history. Survivors are baptized – and hurting – members of Christ's body who need a Good Samaritan Church at their side."
A spokesman for the attorney general's office said they "welcome the introspection" that produced the diocese's shift in position.
"For now, however, the State remains subject to a trial court ruling, entered at the Diocese of Camden's urging, blocking this presentment process from going forward," spokesman Michael Symons said. "After years of litigation, kept hidden from public view until the Supreme Court granted our unsealing motion this past March, we look forward to an opinion addressing these important questions."
Such questions include whether the state can seek a presentment against a private entity and whether courts can block a presentment that hasn't been returned.
The diocese had argued that presentments are intended to address ongoing public harms by public entities and officials, and clergy abuse is a past "eradicated" harm involving a private entity that impacted "only a fragment" of the population. Trial and appellate judges had sided with the diocese, and the state appealed to the Supreme Court.
State attorneys hope Supreme Court justices will agree with their arguments, supported by victims, that clergy abuse was a public harm with ongoing impacts that could warrant grand jury scrutiny and that judges can't squash theoretical presentments that don't yet exist.
Mark Crawford, the New Jersey state director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he was cautiously optimistic about what the diocese's legal surrender means for the church's ongoing reckoning with its sordid history of abuse.
"Hardball legal tactics only silence victims and create more mistrust, more pain, more cynicism. Our church officials' moral authority continues to be eroded by their own actions. So this is a refreshing change," Crawford said. "I had hoped that one day somebody would come along who's willing to buck the trend, stand up, fight the system and say, 'No, we must take the path less chosen.' It sounds like that might be Bishop Williams. I hope that's true, but only time will tell."
New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com.
