A New Jersey jury ordered a small religious-order-run retreat house to pay $3 million to a survivor of abuse dating to the 1970s, more than five years after she filed suit. With several related cases still pending, the verdict shows the trial track survivors sometimes have to take when settlement talks fail.
Reviewed by Survivor Justice Alliance · Updated 2026-10-21
Figures compiled from Catholic press coverage of the local jury verdict against the retreat center.
Most civil sexual abuse cases against institutions end in a negotiated settlement long before a jury is ever seated. This one did not. The survivor filed her complaint against the retreat center in January 2021, and the case did not reach a verdict until a local jury returned one in July 2026, more than five years later.
The underlying allegations date back further still. The woman says she was abused in 1974 while a minor at a small retreat house the religious order religious order operated on the Jersey Shore. Two men connected to the retreat, a former priest and a religious brother, are accused across multiple lawsuits of abusing children there between 1974 and 1982.
A settlement is a number both sides agree to, often without a public finding that either side did anything wrong. A jury verdict is different: it is a public determination of liability and damages that the losing party did not get to choose. Here, the jury set the figure at $3 million.
On top of that award, the survivor's attorneys have separately asked the court for roughly $750,000 in prejudgment interest, which compensates a plaintiff for the years that passed between when a claim arose and when it was finally paid, on the theory that a defendant should not benefit from delay.
At trial, the retreat center argued it should not be held responsible because it was unaware of what two of its own people were doing. Institutional defendants raise a version of that argument often, but juries can reject it once evidence shows a pattern of misconduct stretching across years, multiple victims, or a setting where supervision should have caught the behavior sooner. The survivor's attorney called the ordeal "very challenging for any survivor of abuse" and welcomed the jury's verdict after years of litigation.
Because several other lawsuits describing the same time period and the same retreat center are still pending, this verdict is unlikely to be the last word. Cases like it often serve as an early benchmark, giving both sides a real number to weigh as they decide whether the remaining claims should be settled or also taken to trial.
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Only a small share of civil abuse cases actually go to trial. Here is the general path a case can follow when it does.
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A settlement is a negotiated agreement both sides accept, often without an official finding of wrongdoing. A jury verdict is a public decision, reached after a trial, about whether a defendant is liable and how much it owes.
It is an added sum meant to compensate a plaintiff for the time value of money between when a claim arose and when it is finally paid, so that a defendant does not effectively benefit from years of delay.
Not necessarily. The losing party can file post-trial motions or appeal, which can extend the timeline before a survivor actually receives payment.
Parties may disagree sharply on liability or value in a particular case, or an institution may want a public test verdict before deciding how to approach the rest of a similar docket.