Clergy Sexual Abuse
The Firm has been representing abuse survivors since 2003.
In the words of the Editorial Board of the Wilmington News Journal, “Mr. Neuberger never gave up on his fight to receive justice for his abused clients” in the Diocese of Wilmington bankruptcy. Neuberger, “who represented the vast majority of the approximately 150 local plaintiffs who have brought claims against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington for abuse, has been stigmatized and ridiculed for his persistent and sometimes overly public pursuit of justice for his clients. As damaging as his efforts have been to local priests and parishes, that’s what lawyers do.”
The Diocese of Wilmington consists of the 3 counties of the State of Delaware (New Castle, Kent and Sussex) and the 9 counties on the Eastern Shore of the State of Maryland (Caroline, Cecil, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne, Somerset, Talbot, Wicomico and Worcester).
As recently reported by the Baltimore Sun, the Firm was initially able to reach settlements on behalf of some survivors of Diocesan priests but, following the retirement of former Bishop Michael Saltarelli, “the tone changed” when then Archdiocese of Baltimore Auxiliary Bishop W. Francis Malooly reached the “zenith” of his career and was appointed as his successor.
As explained by the New York Times, WHYY-PBS, the Baltimore Sun, the Wilmington News Journal and many others, less than 12 hours before the start of the first of eight state court trials against the Diocese and its parishes arising out decades of abuse by a longtime priest abuser who served at many parishes throughout Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, in October 2009 Bishop Malooly ordered what was described as a “controversial Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.” All trials and other cases against the Diocese and its many Delaware and Maryland parishes were immediately halted as a result, preventing the public airing of the Diocese’s “dirty linen” in open court.
Over the next several years, along with with co-counsel Jacobs & Crumplar and attorney Raeann Warner, the Firm represented the “overwhelming majority” of sexual abuse survivors in the recovery of $77.425 million and numerous non-monetary terms in the Diocese of Wilmington bankruptcy case and later an additional $30,000,000+ against the Wilmington/Philadelphia Province of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales and other religious orders.
As described in greater detail in the section immediately below, Tom would later write a 427 page book which “details the court battles” that were fought along the way as a “testament to the bravery … [and] courage it took for survivors to step up and want to seek justice and tell the truth” so these experiences would not be lost forever in a dusty court file.
Notable Accomplishments
Fought for nearly four years to defend and successfully uphold the constitutionality of the landmark Delaware Child Victim’s Act of 2007, 10 Del.C. § 8145, which allowed childhood sexual abuse survivors to finally hold accountable their abusers and the institutions that enabled them. The first Superior Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the CVA came in 2007 in the case of Commander Whitwell v. Norbertines, et al., the second arrived in 2009 in Sheehan v. Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, et al., and the final decision came in 2011 when the Delaware Supreme Court, sitting en banc in Sheehan v. Oblates, unanimously and conclusively ruled and rejected all state and federal constitutional attacks on the legality of the CVA.- Together with co-counsel Jacobs & Crumplar, represented abuse survivor John M. Vai in his trial against Father Francis DeLuca and St. Elizabeth’s Roman Catholic Church, and achieving the first jury verdict to ever hold accountable an individual parish for its long, despicable cover up of the sexual abuse of its young parishioners by its parish priests. Following a nearly eight week trial, a Kent County Delaware jury found St. Elizabeth’s liable for $3,000,001 in compensatory and punitive damages and Father Francis DeLuca liable for $60,000,000 in compensatory and punitive damages for the abuse inflicted on John when he was just a young boy.
Largest priest-pedophile federal jury verdict in the history of the State of Delaware; $41,000,000 in Commander Whitwell v. Father Edward Smith, C.A.No. 05-796-SLR (D.Del.).- Before the CVA was enacted, achieved first State of Delaware court decision recognizing repressed memory or traumatic amnesia as a valid means of tolling the statute of limitations in cases of childhood sexual abuse in Eden v. Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, 2006 WL 3512482 (Del.Super. Dec. 4, 2006).
- While fighting for legal relief for all abuse survivors in Pennsylvania, on June 27, 2016 the Philadelphia Inquirer described Tom as one of the “harshest critics” of the powerful Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman and his participation in the legislative conspiracy to deny abuse survivors their day in court all the while not disclosing to the public that his namesake law firm was being paid by the Catholic Church.
Tom is the author of the book, When Priests Become Predators: Profiles of Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors (2012). Using sworn testimony presented in open court to Delaware juries as well as documents and exhibits taken from the public court docket, When Priests Become Predators tells the stories of a number of brave abuse survivors who overcame overwhelming odds in fighting a multi-year battle against the Diocese of Wilmington and its religious orders in which they exposed a decades long institutional cover up of priest sexual abuse by trusted religious authorities.
- In the words of one interviewer, “Tom wanted to tell the stories of several of these survivors and memorialize what they went through so their experiences are not forgotten in a dusty court file and otherwise lost to history.” The article describes him as “a legal gadfly, challenging the powers that be and fighting for the ‘little guy’ in the court system and the media.” The interview also is hosted by BishopAccountability.
- Prior to the release of the 2018 Pennsylvania Grand Jury report, this was the most comprehensive study of the scope and tactics of the world-wide cover up of child rape within the Roman Catholic Church.
Significant Court Decisions
Hecksher v. Fairwinds Baptist Church, Inc. (Del. 2015), 115 A.3d. 1187 (Del. 2015) (en banc):
- Rejecting the claims of a School and a Church that they should be absolved of responsibility when they knowingly hired employees with conflicting personal loyalties and later the first of those employees failed to report the rape and sexual abuse by the other employee of a young girl at the school,
- Exhaustively discussing the interplay between scope of employment and vicarious liability of an employer for an employee’s failure to report sexual abuse of children,
- Holding that “a reasonable juror could conclude that Fairwinds’ failure to take any steps to inform its staff of their statutory obligation to report sexual abuse of students and train them on how to detect and prevent such abuse was an extreme departure from the required standard of care.”
Sheehan v. Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, 15 A.3d. 1247 (Del. 2011) (en banc):
- Upholding the constitutionality of the Delaware Child Victim’s Act of 2007, 10 Del.C. § 8145, and finding that it violated neither state nor federal due process when it created a two year statute of limitations “window” which revived previously time-barred civil claims against child abusers and their institutional enablers,
- Holding that the Child Victim’s Act, as applied to the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, did not violate due process “because there is abundant evidence – including the Oblates’ own records demonstrating prior knowledge of [priest] Norris’ sexual abuse and his many other problems,”
- Finding that the exclusion of the expert testimony of an abuse survivor’s general causation expert, Diane M. Langberg, Ph.D., was reversible error because such testimony “was necessary to establish the psychological baseline for the general types of emotional, mental, spiritual and physical injuries that survivors of childhood sexual abuse suffer” and went to “the most critical issue in this case,”
- Holding that the Child Victim’s Act revived intentional torts, such as fraud and conspiracy, brought by a child abuse survivor against the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales and Salesianum School.
Commander Whitwell v. Archmere Academy, Inc., 2008 WL 1735370 (Del.Super. April 16, 2008):
- in a case of first impression, upholding over a due process challenge the constitutionality of the landmark Delaware Child Victim’s Act of 2007, which created a two year retroactive statute of limitations window allowing victims and survivors of childhood sexual abuse to hold their abusers and enablers accountable,
- rejecting the transactional theory of sexual abuse and instead holding that each and every act of sexual abuse is a separate and actionable legal wrong.
Eden v. Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, 2006 WL 3512482 (Del.Super. Dec. 4, 2006) (recognizing repressed memory as a valid means of tolling the statute of limitations in childhood sexual abuse cases).
McClure v. Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Inc., C.A.No. 06C-12-235-CLS (Del.Super. Apr. 7, 2009) (holding that traumatic amnesia/repressed memory is medically and scientifically sound and admissible under the expert testimony standards set forth in Daubert and Rule 702).
Keller v. Maccubbin, C.A.No. K11C-03-015-RBY (Del.Super. May 16, 2012) (reaffirming the traumatic amnesia holdings of Eden and McClure and explaining that “As Delaware has come to realize, injury caused by child sexual abuse can, and does, extend far beyond that which is associated with a typical battery … the effects thereof present concerns much greater than those associated with the typical physical injury.”).
Eden v. Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, 2007 WL 4722830 (Del.Super. Dec. 14, 2007) (striking down a priest’s efforts to hide behind the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and instead requiring the priest to answer deposition questions about his sexual abuse of a young boy in Delaware and New Jersey).
Commander Whitwell v. Archmere Academy, C.A.No. 07C-08-006-RBY (Del.Super. Feb. 22, 2008) (ordering a priest to answer deposition questions about his sexual abuse of a young boy in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, despite the priest’s efforts to hide behind the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination).
Elliott v. The Marist Brothers of the Schools, Inc., C.A.No. 09-611-SLR (D.Del. Sept. 21, 2010) (holding that a priest’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination did not bar the Court from ordering that the priest answer deposition questions about his sexual abuse of a young boy in Delaware, New Jersey and New York).
Whitwell v. Archmere Academy, Inc., C.A.No. 07C-08-006-RBY (Del.Super. May 29, 2008) (refusing to recognize an adjudicated abuser priest’s psychotherapist-patient privilege in childhood sexual abuse cases and instead holding that the psychotherapist may be deposed about his treatment of the priest and his records opened for discovery).
Sheehan v. Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, C.A.No. 07C-11-234 (Del.Super. Nov. 6, 2009) (holding that former Benedictine monk and Catholic priest A.W. Richard Sipe is qualified as an expert witness under Rule 702 by reason of his extensive experience, education and numerous publications on issues of clergy sexual abuse to testify about, inter alia, “code words and euphemisms used within Religious Orders and Dioceses to describe sexual misconduct by priests”).
Heaney v. Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, et al., C.A.No. 08C-11-097-CLS (Del.Super. May 11, 2009) (denying the Catholic Church’s efforts to dismiss a case brought by the father of a young boy who suffered three years of sexual abuse by his parish priest and thereafter committed suicide and holding that the Delaware Child Victim’s Act of 2007 revived survival actions brought by the next of kin of such an innocent child).
John Yoe #1 v. Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Inc., C.A.No. 09C-06-188-CLS (Del.Super. Mar. 15, 2010) (holding that a survivor of priest sexual abuse may proceed anonymously using a pseudonym because “sexual abuse is a highly sensitive and personal matter … Plaintiff’s desire to remain anonymous is understandable and Plaintiff’s interest in protecting his identity outweighs any interest in favor of open judicial proceedings”).
Jane Doe #1 v. Laurel School District, C.A.No. 09C-06-020-WLW (Del.Super. Dec. 19, 2011) (holding that an abuse survivor may file suit using a pseudonym when a medical professional attested that using the survivor’s real name would negatively impact their treatment and recovery).
Quill v. Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Inc., 2008 WL 193000 (D.Del. Jan. 23, 2008) (recognizing the right of a federal court to hear lawsuits brought under the Delaware Child Victim’s Act of 2007).
How We Began Representing Survivors
After decades of fighting for the “little guy” in civil rights lawsuits against corrupt government officials and others, in December 2003 the man who would become the Firm’s first abuse survivor client walked in the office door. He explained that after the Boston revelations began in January 2002, nine long years of sexual abuse which he had suffered from ages 9 to 17 at the hands of a priest of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales began to surface in bits and pieces in his memory. These memories had been previously psychologically repressed due to the trauma he endured for so many years. He had already gone to the criminal authorities, but was told there was nothing they could do because too much time had passed. He wanted to know if the civil courts could help him protect kids and hold accountable those who knew about the abuse but had covered it up. He had been looking for an attorney, but no one was willing to take his case and challenge the Catholic Church. And so the Firm’s involvement in this long battle began.
Moving Forward
The Firm has represented abuse survivors from Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and throughout the country.