What happened to you in a Diocese of Brooklyn parish was not okay.

The Diocese of Brooklyn is Brooklyn and Queens, nothing else: all 172 parishes, the parish schools, the CYO gyms. In April 2024 the state's Attorney General put it this way, her words and not ours: "The Diocese knew about this pervasive problem, but it did not adequately address allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct." Altar server, student, kid in the youth program, whichever you were, if something happened there that you've never quite set down, then yes. This is about you.

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6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

This applies to you no matter what

You never told a soul. Not a parent, not a priest in confession, not a spouse. More than 1,100 people have brought Child Victims Act claims against this diocese, and most of them carried it for thirty or forty years first.
Not on the list, the one the diocese keeps? That list has more than 120 names on it and they were still adding to it in July 2026, and a name missing from it means one thing only: nobody has made the diocese put it there yet.
It wasn't a priest. A teacher at the parish school, a coach, a CYO volunteer, a brother, a nun. The diocese's own mediation covers people abused by lay staff too.
You already went through the diocese's own claims program, the IRCP, years ago. Say so on the call, first thing, because it matters and a lawyer has to know it before anything else gets discussed.
It was 1985, say, or 1979, and you assume that's too long ago. The Child Victims Act left one rule on New York's books that runs right up to your 55th birthday, and Brooklyn and Queens have a second route for anyone older than that, which we get to below.
You're a sister, a husband, a grown son asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway. A lot of people do.

The Diocese of Brooklyn record: what the Attorney General found, what the courts have said, and when

None of what follows is ours. The Attorney General wrote it, or a Kings County judge, or the diocese itself, or the reporters who read the files, and every line links to where it came from. Where a court has found something we say found; where a complaint says it we say alleges. The diocese has not admitted liability in any of the pending cases, and its own list says the names on it are allegations, not verdicts.

February 15, 2019

The day Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio put out the diocese's list of clergy with credible allegations against them. Nobody had seen those names in public before. Today it runs past 120 names, two tables, each with the man's assignments and dates, and the most recent addition came on July 26, 2026. The diocese's own note on what credible means: diocesan officials believe the allegations may be true. Diocese of Brooklyn list of accused.

March 12, 2020

Here's the one case we follow through this whole record, because a judge has since ruled on it. A man the court papers call only S.E. sued the Diocese of Brooklyn and St. Patrick's Church in Kings County Supreme Court under the Child Victims Act, Index No. 506289/2020, and his complaint alleges the parish's parochial vicar abused him in 1988 and 1989, at eight and then nine, on counts of negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress. S.E. v Diocese of Brooklyn, decision of January 20, 2026.

April 16, 2024

Attorney General Letitia James announced an agreement with the diocese that day over how it had handled clergy abuse; the sentence at the top of this page, the one about a pervasive problem, is from her release. Her office's findings underneath it were inconsistent standards for deciding whether an accusation was credible, delayed investigations, and accused priests the diocese failed to adequately monitor, and the examples in the release run like this. A priest moved from parish to parish in the 1990s after the diocese learned of problems. A school principal who, in 2000, resigned over what she'd seen. And one that's hard to read even now: a 2006 complaint, more than 100 incidents in it, which the review board didn't find credible until 2018, twelve years on. What the diocese signed up for: an independent secular monitor for at least three years, credibility decisions inside twenty days, every complaint sent on to law enforcement. New York Attorney General.

July 23, 2025

The Appellate Division, Second Department, ruled in the S.E. case that the diocese's clergy personnel file was discoverable and that the First Amendment did not let the diocese redact it. The decision names the priest: nonparty Patrick Sexton, employed by the diocese in 1988 and 1989. S.E. v Diocese of Brooklyn, 2025 NY Slip Op 04228.

January 20, 2026

Justice Joanne D. Quinones granted S.E. partial summary judgment on notice. From the diocese's own records the court found a memorandum dated September 6, 1979, about the priest photographing nude boys in a shower at Jones Beach; parental complaints; an evaluation dated November 14, 1986, diagnosing pedophilia; roughly twelve documented allegations involving children aged seven to thirteen, all before this plaintiff. Bishop Mugavero had assigned the priest to St. Patrick's on June 20, 1986. The court's words: the diocese "had actual notice of Father S.'s propensity to engage in sexually inappropriate and abusive conduct involving minor children well before the abuse alleged by Plaintiff." 2026 NY Slip Op 30248(U).

February 12, 2026

Bishop Robert Brennan wrote to the diocese that it intends a global resolution of all approximately 1,100 remaining Child Victims Act cases, with Judge Daniel J. Buckley and Paul A. Finn as mediators. The letter says the diocese's own claims program, the IRCP, has paid more than $100 million to over 500 people since 2017, that it is setting money aside, talking to its liability insurers, and has retained Sullivan & Cromwell, Anderson Kill and Alvarez & Marsal. Bishop Brennan's letter.

February 17, 2026

NBC New York reported that Justice Quinones had unsealed Sexton's personnel file in a second case, brought by a man who says he was abused at St. Cecilia in Greenpoint in 1979 and 1980. In it: a 1979 memo in which Sexton admitted taking pictures of four boys naked in a shower, and a 2004 letter from a diocesan administrator to Cardinal Ratzinger saying the allegations began shortly after his ordination in May 1977. Placed on leave in 1990, removed in 2004, laicized in 2006. He is on the diocese's list, at St. Cecilia and St. Patrick, Long Island City. NBC New York.

June 12, 2026

StoneTurn, the independent monitor the Attorney General had insisted on, put out its first annual report. It covers April 2024 through April 2025 and credits the diocese with consistent compliance. In that one year the diocese received eleven historic allegations against clergy it deemed at least seemed to be true, and one current allegation still under review. The Tablet.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from June 12, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Diocese of Brooklyn lawsuit

The diocese. Not only the man. A priest answers for himself, if he is alive and has anything to answer with, and most of the names on the list are dead or defrocked by now. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn is neither. It assigned the priests, kept the files, took the complaints, and decided what to do with them. New York law holds an institution responsible when it put someone in charge of children after it knew, or should have known, what he was. That is the theory in every one of the 1,100 cases, and in the S.E. case a judge has already ruled the diocese knew, from its own paperwork, going back to 1979.

The parish is usually a defendant too. S.E. sued St. Patrick's Church alongside the diocese, and the Second Department said the personnel file had to be handed over because negligent hiring, retention and supervision was pleaded. A school, a CYO program, a religious order that staffed a parish can all be named where the facts fit. A lawyer sorts out who.

About the money, plainly. The diocese has paid more than $100 million through its own program, says it is setting money aside, and is pressing its insurers for the mediation. No bankruptcy has been filed; its lawyer told the New York Times it would sell real estate rather than declare one. We check that every three weeks, because a Chapter 11 filing would set a deadline for everybody, and this page would say so the same day.

Your deadline: the New York statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims against the Diocese of Brooklyn

Under 18 when it happened? Then the day you turn 55 is your deadline. Which is why the questions ask about 1971. Born that year or after, you're under 55 as you read this, and the door is open on your age alone, whatever year it happened, under a rule (CPLR 208(b)) that the 2019 Child Victims Act left standing after its one-time revival window shut on August 14, 2021. 1979 counts. 1988 counts. 2015, too.

Born before 1971, though? There's a second route, and you have it only because the diocese happens to sit inside New York City, where on January 29, 2026 the City reopened its Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law for anything that happened before January 9, 2022. That law reaches the institutions that enabled the violence, not only the man himself, and it shuts on July 29, 2027. One honest thing about it: whether the City had the power to reopen it is a question the New York Court of Appeals has been asked to answer, in a case called Parker v. Alexander, and a Manhattan judge has paused a case on exactly this point until the answer comes. Nobody can promise you how that ends. What a lawyer can do is get you filed inside the window, so that if it stands, you are in it.

In plain words. Born 1971 or after: no window, no guesswork, your age is the whole answer. Born earlier, the path is real and so is the date, July 29, 2027, but so is the question hanging over it. Either way you're going to need a conversation, not a form.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You have never said it out loud. Not once.
You don't have a word for what happened, and you're half convinced it wouldn't count.
The priest is dead, or defrocked, or on the list already with somebody else's story next to his name.
You went back to that parish for years. Got married there. Had your kids baptized there.
It was a teacher, a coach, a brother, not a priest.
You live in Jersey now, or Florida, or Pennsylvania, same as most people from those neighborhoods.

Parishes and programs covered

Any parish or parish school in Brooklyn or Queens, all 172 of them, and the ones that merged or closed along the way, which is a long list by itself. The diocesan high schools. The CYO teams, the altar-server programs, the summer camps, the rectories, and the chancery itself, 310 Prospect Park West. And St. Cecilia in Greenpoint and St. Patrick in Long Island City, because those two are the parishes in the Sexton files. Out on Long Island you're in Rockville Centre, which is a different diocese; Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island are the Archdiocese of New York; answer the questions anyway and say where on the call.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue the Diocese of Brooklyn?

More than 1,100 people have, in Kings and Queens County Supreme Court, and the diocese is trying to settle all of those through mediation right now. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were born and where it happened, which is what the questions above sort out.

Where is the Diocese of Brooklyn's list of accused priests, and is mine on it?

Linked above in the record, and it's on the diocese's own website: each name, his parishes, his dates. If the name is there, the diocese itself has found the allegations may be true. If it isn't, that changes nothing about your right to ask.

New York's statute of limitations for child sexual abuse: how long do I actually have?

Until your 55th birthday, if you were a minor when it happened, and that comes from CPLR 208(b). The Child Victims Act's one-time revival window for older claims came and went, closing in August 2021. And inside New York City there's a separate window, under the Gender-Motivated Violence law, that stays open until July 29, 2027 and reaches older claims, though it's being challenged in the courts as we write this.

The priest who abused me is dead. Can I still bring a claim?

Yes. The claim that matters is against the diocese, which is still on Prospect Park West, and against the parish. A good number of the men on the diocese's list have died. The cases against the diocese don't stop for that.

Is the Diocese of Brooklyn going bankrupt, or about to?

As of September 2026, no. Nothing has been filed, and the diocese's lawyer told the New York Times it would sell property rather than file. A filing would set a court deadline for every claim. We check every three weeks, and this page will say if it changes.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Nothing, here. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed New York attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.