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CV NEWS FEED // The Archdiocese of Philadelphia cannot be held accountable for alleged clergy sex abuse that occurred out of state, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Feb. 4.
The New Jersey Monitor reported that the ruling centered on a lawsuit filed by an Illinois man who alleges Michael J. McCarthy, a defrocked priest in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, molested him when he was 14. The plaintiff, known as D.T. in the suit, was a parishioner at McCarthy’s parish in Pennsylvania at the time.
However, the alleged abuse did not occur in Pennsylvania, but rather at a private home in Margate, New Jersey, where McCarthy took D.T. with the consent of D.T.’s widowed mother. Paraphrasing the state supreme court’s decision, The New Jersey Monitor reported that “McCarthy took the teen to Margate specifically so that he could have unsupervised access to him, without his superiors’ knowledge.”
D.T. sued the Archdiocese in 2020 after New Jersey opened a two-year window in the statute of limitations for childhood sex abuse victims. Lower courts sided with the Archdiocese, citing a lack of jurisdiction, and the state supreme court upheld the previous rulings, stating that the Archdiocese cannot be responsible for the abuse.
“The conduct that D.T. alleges — a priest’s exploitation of his clerical role to sexually abuse a minor — is reprehensible,” Justice Anne Patterson wrote in the unanimous ruling. “The sole issue before the Court, however, is whether our courts may exercise personal jurisdiction over the Archdiocese in the setting of this case.”
The court found that McCarthy, not the Archdiocese, was responsible for the actions that occurred in New Jersey, and additionally stated that “there is no evidence that any Archdiocese was aware of McCarthy’s impending trip, let alone that it assigned McCarthy to take D.T. to New Jersey.”
“There is no evidence that McCarthy conducted business on behalf of the Archdiocese in New Jersey, or that the trip entailed any religious or ecclesiastical activities,” Patterson added.
The New Jersey branch of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests opposed the ruling.
Branch director Mark Crawford stated, “A priest doesn’t stop acting as a priest because he has crossed a state line.”
