E-mail article Print article Subscribe

Posted by the Ocean County Observer on 08/19/07

TOMS RIVER — A $100 million lawsuit against St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Brick will proceed after a judge on Friday declined to dismiss complaints brought by 19 men who allege they were molested as children in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s by the church's onetime pastor.

Superior Court Judge Thomas E. O'Brien denied requests to dismiss the lawsuit. The requests to dismiss the case were made by attorneys representing the church and its adjacent St. Thomas Christian Academy on Salmon Street, the church's and school's officials and parent organizations, and the estate of the church's onetime pastor, the late Rev. Robert L. Slegel.

Toms River attorney Robert R. Fuggi filed the lawsuit on behalf of 19 plaintiffs, who now range in age from 29 to 52, who allege they were molested by Slegel when they were children ranging in age from 5 to 15. There is a 20th man who also claims he was molested as a child by Slegel, whom Fuggi said he plans to add as a plaintiff to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs are identified in the suit only by their initials.

"Today was a significant victory," Phillipsburg attorney Gregory Gianforcaro, another attorney representing the plaintiffs, said afterward of O'Brien's decision. "It means that the case can proceed on for pretrial hearings."

For a 40-year-old Brick man who is one of the 19 plaintiffs, the decision means he can continue with his quest to protect his own and other children from similar sexual abuse.

"I'm a parent, and I have two small children, and I don't want anyone to go through what I went through," said the man, whose identity has been withheld because he was the victim of alleged sexual assaults. "I don't want anyone to go through the hell that I and the other 19 did."

The man, who attended Friday's hearing with 12 of the other plaintiffs, said outside the courthouse that he was 6 years old and would play ball in the street every day with his friends when Slegel opened the doors to the church's facilities to them, telling them they could have a place to play, rain or shine.

Soon after that, Slegel would take him into his office, make him sit on his lap and molest him while the boy played with the pastor's typewriter, the man alleged. The molestation occurred weekly for seven years, until he was 13 years old, the man claimed.

Asked the number of times it occurred, the man responded, "I can't count that high."

By the time he was a teenager, "I turned to alcohol, marijuana and cocaine — anything to bury it," the man said. "I was guilty of living a block away (from the church). I was just trying to be a kid."

Also outside the courthouse, the mother of one of the plaintiffs, who did not identify herself to protect the identity of her son, said, "We thought it was awesome that the church was opening its doors to the kids, and we were totally trusting. We never heard anything (about sexual abuse by clergy) back then."

Attorneys for the church on Friday argued that the church, school and its officials have immunity from the claims in the lawsuit because of their status as charitable organizations. The attorneys for the defendants also argued that the two-year statute of limitations had long passed before the lawsuit was filed in 2005.

"The alleged acts of sexual abuse took place between 1967 and 1985," William J. Conroy, attorney for the church and school, told O'Brien.

"My client is deceased, which means this case is a very difficult case to defend for all of the defendants," said Linda A. Olsen, the attorney representing the estate of Slegel, who was living in Southern Shores, N.C. when he died last year at age 77.

Normally, the statute of limitations would have started to run when the plaintiffs turned 18. But Fuggi said because of his clients' repressed or delayed memories of the alleged abuse, the statute of limitations would not start to run until they realized the molestation caused emotional problems they are experiencing as adults.

O'Brien ordered that the plaintiffs be examined by medical and mental-health experts for the defense to determine when they remembered the alleged abuse and realized what effect it had on them. The judge ordered future hearings to be held on that matter and on the relationship of each plaintiff with the church and school to determine whether their claims can proceed to trial or are barred by either charitable immunity or the statute of limitations.

O'Brien, in making his ruling, cited a 2006 decision by the state Supreme Court in a case involving alleged child sexual assault — John W. Hardwicke against the American Boychoir School. The Hardwicke decision said charitable organizations are not immune from claims brought for willful, wanton or grossly negligent conduct, and that an institution such as a school can be viewed as a child abuser if it is standing in place of a child's parents and fails to protect the youngster from abuse.

The judge said he would meet with the attorneys in the case in November of 2008 to schedule the pretrial hearings, after the plaintiffs are examined by medical and mental-health experts.

O'Brien dismissed complaints brought by two of the plaintiffs against the Rev. John M. Elstad, an associate pastor who worked under Slegel and assumed the post of senior pastor upon Slegel's resignation amid scandal in 1993. O'Brien dismissed the two complaints because the allegations of abuse preceded Elstad's arrival to the church, but he let stand the complaints of the remaining plaintiffs against Elstad.

The lawsuit has alleged that Elstad, who retired in 2004, and other church and school officials turned a blind eye to the sexual molestation.

Elstad's attorney, Michael Gilberti, has denied that Elstad had any knowledge of the alleged abuse. Joseph Goldberg, an attorney representing officials of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and 192 Lutheran churches known as the New Jersey Synod, said the church officials named as defendants were not yet in office when the alleged molestation occurred.

With the exception of Gilberti, attorneys for the defendants declined to comment after O'Brien issued his rulings. Gilberti said he was not suprised by the judge's decision.

E-mail article Print article Subscribe