UPDATE:  On December 1, 2019, the New Jersey Sexual Abuse Survivor Law went into effect. This law opens up a two-year window for sexual abuse survivors to file lawsuits, regardless of when the abuse took place. Read more here!

A new report indicates that the Catholic Church has funded lobbyists in an attempt to stop New Jersey lawmakers from changing state law to extend the statute of limitations on sex abuse cases.

According to the report, the Church spent $633,000 between 2011 and 2018 on this lobbying in New Jersey, opposing victim advocacy groups that supported the law change.

New Jersey 101.5 notes that this amount is small in comparison to how much the Church has spent on lobbying efforts in neighboring states. Reportedly, the Catholic Church spent $5.32 million in Pennsylvania, $2.9 million in New York, and $875,000 in Connecticut on lobbying against changes to statutes of limitation.

In New Jersey, these lobbying efforts did not succeed. A new law was enacted in May that extends the statute of limitations for child sex abuse legal claims until the victims reach age 55, and gives all survivors, even if they are over age 55, a two-year window to file child sex abuse cases.

The aforementioned changes apply to civil changes. New Jersey has no statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions for sexual abuse.

According to the Northern Valley Press, this change to the statue of limitations had been in the works for 15 years, but “received new momentum” after the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report into the problem of Catholic Church sex abuse in Pennsylvania. 

Though the grand jury report was only concerned with Catholic Church sex abuse in Pennsylvania, the problem reportedly exists in Catholic churches in New Jersey and around the country.

Victims’ advocates have expressed support of the new law. A representative of the New Jersey chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said, “the new law will be one of the best in the nation, granting all sexual abuse survivors the opportunity to access the justice system,” according to the Northern Valley Press.

In contrast, the Catholic churches in New Jersey expressed concern that the law would allow child sex abuse lawsuits to be filed that were based on insufficient evidence. NorthJersey.com says the Catholic Church’s objection to the law was at least in part based on concerns that the law change and subsequent lawsuits would cause the Church financial difficulty.

Now, the dioceses New Jersey may face more sexual abuse lawsuits as victims have more opportunities to file claims, which could cause financial difficulty and expose the church to increasing liability over the issue of sexual abuse.

This article is not legal advice. It is presented
for informational purposes only.