A Cape May County jury awarded $3 million to a woman who says she was abused as a teenage volunteer at a Marianist retreat center in the 1970s, even though the jury cleared the religious order of direct liability for the assaults themselves. With three more cases from the same facility still waiting to be tried, here is what the verdict actually decided and what it can mean if you are weighing a claim of your own.
Reviewed by Abuse Justice Center · Updated 2026-07-25
Figures drawn from Cape May County trial coverage and reporting on the retreat center's abuse litigation.
The case centered on a woman who says she was abused as a teenage volunteer at a small Marianist-run retreat property on the New Jersey shore back in 1974. After a trial in Cape May County, the jury returned a $3 million award for her emotional trauma. Her attorneys have also asked the judge to tack on close to $750,000 in prejudgment interest, a routine step meant to account for the decades between the abuse and the payout.
What makes the outcome more complicated is that the same jury declined to hold the Marianist Province itself directly liable for the assaults. In plain terms, jurors separated two questions: did the abuse happen and cause real harm, and was the province legally responsible for it in the specific way the case was argued. Splitting those questions is more common than people expect, and it does not mean the survivor lost. It means one legal theory succeeded while another did not.
The lawsuit accused a former priest and a religious brother of committing the abuse between 1974 and 1982, but neither man was ever named as a defendant in the civil case. That is a detail people often find confusing, but it is standard practice. An accused individual may have already left ministry, moved away, died, or simply have no meaningful assets to collect from, so survivors' attorneys instead pursue the institution that employed, housed, or supervised the accused person.
That shift in target does not weaken a claim. Institutions can be sued for their own conduct, not just for standing behind an individual, including how they screened, supervised, or responded to warning signs about someone in their care. The Marianist Province, for its part, said in a statement that it respects the judicial process and has since put safeguarding policies in place across its ministries, while stopping short of admitting fault in this particular case.
This is not an isolated dispute. Court records show five separate lawsuits have been filed against the same retreat center since 2021, all involving the same two accused men and overlapping time periods. Three of those cases have not yet gone to trial, which means the facility, and survivors watching from the outside, may see additional verdicts, and possibly different outcomes, in the months ahead.
For survivors who have not yet come forward, a pattern like this can matter. Multiple lawsuits describing similar conduct at the same institution over an extended stretch of years can help establish that problems were known, or should have been known, well before any one case reached a courtroom.
A mixed verdict like this one is not a reason to assume institutional abuse claims are too hard to win. It is a reminder that these cases often hinge on how the claim is framed: negligent supervision, failure to screen employees or volunteers, ignoring prior complaints, or covering up known misconduct can all be argued even when the accused individual is never sued directly.
If something similar happened to you at a church, retreat, camp, school, or other institution, the fact that decades have passed, that the accused person is gone, or that one legal theory failed in someone else's case does not automatically close the door on yours. A confidential conversation with an attorney who handles these claims can help you understand what evidence exists and what your options actually look like today.
Verdicts like this one raise real questions for anyone weighing whether to come forward. These are the basics worth knowing before you talk to an attorney.
Abuse Justice Center is a lawyer-matching and advocacy service, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. Matching and consultations are free, and network attorneys work on contingency. Need support now? The RAINN hotline is 800-656-4673, 24/7.
No. Many institutional abuse claims proceed against the organization that employed or supervised the accused person, especially when that individual cannot be located, has died, or has no assets to pursue.
Not necessarily. Every case depends on its own facts, evidence, and legal theory. A mixed verdict in one case does not decide the outcome of another, even against the same institution.
Many states have expanded or eliminated filing deadlines for childhood sexual abuse claims through revival windows, so a case that once seemed too old to pursue may still be eligible. An attorney can check your state's current rules.
Updated policies do not erase past liability. A claim looks at what the institution knew and did during the relevant time period, not what it does today.