NJ Supreme Court Allows Grand Jury Investigation into Catholic Church to Proceed; SNAP elated
For immediate release: June 16, 2025
The New Jersey State Supreme Court ruled today that a grand jury may examine accusations of Catholic clergy sexually abusing children. SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is elated with this decision. Mark Crawford, SNAP’s New Jersey leader, said, “Decades of crimes against children will finally be exposed.”
Time and again, it seems to us, that the only path towards transparency when dealing with the abuse of children by Catholic priests and staffers is through the free press and the secular courts. In fact, at every turn, powerful Church officials, with millions of dollars at their disposal to hire the best law firms, oppose the very openness they pledged in 2002 in the Dallas Charter.
Hundreds of priests have already been identified as abusers because of the courage of survivors. According to the Pew Research Center, New Jersey is one of four states where Catholics made up a plurality of the population. We believe that a robust, subpoena-driven grand jury investigation in the style of Pennsylvania’s may well expose hundreds more perpetrators, and will make the New Jersey Catholic Church a safer place for today’s children.
One of the most notorious and most powerful officials in the Church in the United States, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, was at one time a New Jersey bishop. To us, his fingerprints will likely be all over whatever is uncovered by this investigation.
A New Jersey grand jury investigation will likely be every bit as eye-opening as the 2018 Pennsylvania report. We already know through media reports and survivor accounts that the Church at every level - in parishes, schools, minor seminaries, major seminaries, and Catholic institutions like Seton Hall University, housed abusers and covered up crimes.
Mapping all of these reports, as this investigation should do, will make New Jersey a safer place for all families, not just Catholic families.
CONTACT: Mark Crawford, SNAP New Jersey ([email protected], 732-632-7687), Melanie Sakoda, Survivor Support Director ([email protected], 925-708-6175), Shaun Dougherty, SNAP Interim Executive Director ([email protected], 814-341-8386)
(SNAP, the Survivors Network, has been providing support for victims of sexual abuse in institutional settings for more than 35 years. We have more than 25,000 survivors and supporters in our network. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org.)
