Whatever happened to you in a Diocese of Trenton parish, it wasn't okay.

If you were an altar server, a CCD kid, a student in a parish school, anywhere in the four counties (Burlington, Mercer, Monmouth, Ocean) the Diocese of Trenton has run since 1881, and a priest or a brother or a teacher did something you've never quite put down, then this page is about you. Not about them. You. The rest is context: 97 parishes, roughly 922,000 Catholics, and a list. The diocese published that list itself, February 2019. 31 names.

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This applies to you no matter what

You never told a soul. Neither, for close to fifty years, had the two men whose complaints are on file in Mercer County. One was eight when it started. The other fifteen. Both filed in 2021.
The priest is dead. Twenty-one of the 31 men on the diocese's list are. The complaints on this page were never against the men anyway; they name the Diocese of Trenton and the parish, and the diocese is still at 701 Lawrenceville Road.
His name is on nobody's list. Neither man in the Mercer County complaints was on the diocese's list when they were filed, and, in the version of the list we could read, still isn't. A list only tells you who's on it.
Maybe it was 1978, maybe 1991, and for years you've assumed the clock ran out. New Jersey rewrote its deadline law in 2019, and if you were born in 1971 or later your claim is open on age alone. Details below.
Middlesex, Somerset, Hunterdon, Warren. Those four counties were Trenton's until November 1981, when they were carved off into the new Diocese of Metuchen, so a parish there before that date was a Trenton parish, whatever the sign says now. Say so on the call and we sort out which diocese answers.
You went to the church's 2019 claims program and never finished the packet, or turned the offer down. Only a signed release closes the door.
You're a sister, a husband, a grown son asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway; a good share of the people who call are calling about someone else.

The Diocese of Trenton lawsuits: what the public record says, and when

None of this is ours. It's two filed complaints, a federal docket, the diocese's own list, an insurer's lawsuit and the reporters who counted the rest, and every line links to where it came from. A complaint is an allegation. A name on the diocese's list is that list's finding. Nobody named on this page has been criminally convicted of anything described here, and the diocese has not admitted liability in any of it. And because it matters for the first question above: the complaints here name St. Pius X in Forked River and St. Gregory the Great in Hamilton Square. The diocese's list names St. Veronica in Howell, St. Rose of Lima in Freehold, Holy Angels in Hamilton, Incarnation in Ewing and Corpus Christi in Willingboro as places where men on the list were assigned; that is an assignment, not a finding about what happened there. Holy Family in Bound Brook appears in a newspaper's compilation of court filings. Every other parish and school on this page is listed because the same diocese ran it. No separate record on them is cited here.

February 13, 2019

The day Bishop David O'Connell released the diocese's list, its own roll of clergy "credibly accused of the sexual abuse of a minor." Thirty names that day, every one of them dead or removed from ministry; a 31st was added within weeks, and within the week the diocese added each man's assignments, parish by parish. One of the 30 had been an assistant superintendent of the diocese's schools. Another had run a youth group. The bishop's own words, from what he wrote that day: "This preliminary list will be updated as more information becomes available." And: "I do this with the greatest sadness and a heavy heart." Asbury Park Press, February 18, 2019.

January 7, 2020

The five New Jersey dioceses' Independent Victim Compensation Program, run by Kenneth Feinberg and Camille Biros, pushed its deadline to February 15, 2020. By that day the administrators had paid or authorized more than $9.2 million statewide, out of church money. What Trenton's share of that was, the diocese has never said. Program announcement (Diocese of Camden).

September 14, 2021

The first of the two complaints this page is built on. Filed in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Mercer County, docket MER-L-001878-21, it alleges that Father Louis Mako abused a boy at St. Pius X in Forked River from about 1973 to 1974, when the boy was fifteen or sixteen. Two defendants: the Diocese of Trenton and St. Pius X. Three counts, all of them negligence: negligence, negligent training and supervision, negligent retention. It alleges the defendants "knew or should have known that Fr. Mako was a danger to children before Fr. Mako sexually assaulted Plaintiff." The complaint, MER-L-001878-21 (PDF).

Same morning

Six minutes later, MER-L-001879-21. Same court, same county, same plaintiffs' counsel. This one alleges Father Joseph T. Wade abused a boy at St. Gregory the Great in Hamilton Square from about 1969 to 1972, from age eight to eleven, and names the diocese and the parish, with the same three negligence counts and the same knew-or-should-have-known allegation. The lawyers made a point of it at the press conference: neither Mako nor Wade was on the diocese's list, and one of them had already been named in at least three lawsuits in New York. The complaint, MER-L-001879-21 (PDF).

November 2021

When the two-year filing window shut on November 30, 2021, NorthJersey.com sat down and built a database of every suit filed against the New Jersey church under the new law. 779 numbered cases. We went through it row by row; 181 name the Diocese of Trenton, some alone, some alongside another diocese or a religious order, and each row gives a parish and the years alleged. Mako, St. Pius X, 1973 to 74, is row 433. Wade, St. Gregory the Great, 1969 to 72, is the next row down, 434, and a separate suit has Wade at that same parish in 1970. Holy Family in Bound Brook, 1981 to 84, is there too, filed against Trenton and Metuchen both. It is a newspaper's compilation of court filings, not a court record, and we cite it as that. NorthJersey.com database, via Justia Verdict (PDF).

December 11, 2023

The most recent version of the list we could read. Still 31 names; 21 of them now dead, the other ten removed from ministry. The assignments run through most of the four counties: St. Veronica in Howell six times; St. Rose of Lima in Freehold, Holy Angels and St. Anthony in Hamilton, Incarnation in Ewing, Corpus Christi in Willingboro and St. Agnes in Atlantic Highlands four times each; St. Gregory the Great in Hamilton Square three times. Two of the 31 had been Chancellor of the diocese. Iazetta is on it. Mako and Wade are not. The diocese's list, updated December 11, 2023 (PDF).

February 5, 2024

The diocese's own insurer sued it. Century Indemnity, which stands in the shoes of the old Insurance Company of North America, went to federal court in New Jersey, 3:24-cv-00685, with a declaratory-judgment action, asking a judge to say what its policies did and didn't have to cover. It named the Diocese of Trenton and some forty of its parishes and schools. Holy Cross in Delran and its elementary and high schools. Corpus Christi, Incarnation, St. Joan of Arc, St. Rose and St. Rose High School, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, St. Raphael-Holy Angels, Christ the King, Sacred Heart, St. Ann, St. Mary of the Lake, more. It didn't get far; on October 28, 2024 the judge tossed it without prejudice, too early to decide. The point for you is the party list: it is the insurer's own map of who was being sued underneath. Docket, Century Indemnity v. Diocese of Trenton (D.N.J.).

August 1, 2025

The diocese dropped a suit of its own. It had sued four insurers, Century, First State, St. Paul Fire and Marine and National Union, that February, saying they would not agree on how to share the cost of the "hundreds" of Child Victims Act suits against it, and that settlement talks with some claimants were "difficult or impossible to conclude" without them. On August 1 it withdrew the case without explanation, after what the trade press read as months of continued negotiation. Insurance Journal, August 8, 2025.

January 9, 2026

A new one, filed after the window and far from New Jersey. Miles Jefferies, 40, sued in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, 3:26-cv-00036, over Father Frank Iazetta, a Trenton priest ordained in 1967 who is on the diocese's list, was sent to Tennessee in 1986, left the priesthood in 1993 and died in 2007. Where, according to the complaint: St. Paul the Apostle in Tullahoma, when the boy was somewhere between six and ten. The pleading uses the same phrase the Mercer complaints do, that the defendants "knew or should have known" of Iazetta's propensity. Since then the case has narrowed. The Nashville defendants got out on May 22, 2026, dismissed with prejudice, and the amended complaint filed June 26 names one defendant, the Diocese of Trenton. Trenton wants out too; its motion to dismiss went in July 17, 2026 and nobody has ruled on it yet. If the case survives that, a jury hears it starting April 4, 2028. Docket, Jefferies v. The Diocese of Trenton (M.D. Tenn.).

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from January 9, 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 Trenton lawsuit

The diocese. Not the priest, or not only him. Both Mercer County complaints name the Diocese of Trenton, the corporation at 701 Lawrenceville Road that ordains these men, assigns them, moves them from Forked River to Hamilton Square to Howell, and keeps the file. The theory is not complicated. Put a man in a collar in front of children and you owe those children something: to know who he is, to check, and to act when someone speaks up. The complaints allege the diocese knew or should have known Mako and Wade were dangers to children before either boy was hurt. That is pleaded, not proven. It is what the cases are for. And one wall that used to stand in the way is gone: the 2019 law took the charitable-immunity defense away from the church, so a diocese answers for negligence the way anyone else does.

And the parish comes with it. St. Pius X and St. Gregory the Great are defendants in their own names, and when the diocese's insurer went to court in 2024 it sued forty-odd parishes and schools alongside the diocese, because each one is a party in the suits underneath. So a claim about a Trenton parish is a claim against the diocese and the parish, and, where a religious order supplied the man, against the order too; the Holy Assumption suit in Roebling named the Franciscans. A lawyer sorts out who answers. You only have to say where.

Where the money comes from matters, so here it is plainly. The Diocese of Trenton hasn't filed for bankruptcy, and that's worth saying out loud because Camden did, in October 2020, and every Camden claim turned into a race against a bar date. Trenton is not there, and nothing we have read suggests it is heading there. It has four insurers, by its own account, it spent 2024 and 2025 in court with them over who pays for the hundreds of suits, and then it withdrew its own case, which in the trade press read as a diocese settling under its policies rather than one about to file. It paid into the 2019 compensation program. It has never published a settlement total. One thing a lawyer will want to know early is whether you took a payment from that program, because a signed release closes the court door. If you didn't, it's open.

Your deadline: the New Jersey statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims

You get the later of two dates. The first is your 55th birthday; if you were under 18 when it happened, you can file any time before it. The second sits seven years out from the day you reasonably connected what happened to the harm it did, which for plenty of people came decades after the fact. That has been New Jersey law since 2019, N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2a if you want to look it up, and it reaches back to abuse from any year; nobody put an end date on it.

Which brings us back to 1971, and why we asked. Born that year or later, you are under 55 in 2026, and that alone opens the age route; nothing else about timing has to be proved. That covers most anyone who was a kid in a Trenton parish from the late 1970s on. Born before 1971, and it turns on the seven years: when you first understood that the abuse caused the harm, not when the abuse happened. For a lot of people that day came late, in a therapist's office or after a news story. It is a real question with a real answer, and a lawyer walks through it with you. Nobody should guess it, and we won't.

One thing that has passed, and people mix it up with this. For two years, December 1, 2019 through November 30, 2021, New Jersey let anyone file, any age, any birth year, even claims long dead under the old law. The two Mercer County complaints came in through that window. It is closed. It did nothing to the age-55 route or the discovery route, which are both still open. If you were an adult when it happened, the same statute gives you seven years from discovery. And if it happened outside New Jersey, as the Tennessee case did, another state's clock may apply; a lawyer decides that too.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never said it out loud. Not to a spouse, not to a priest, not to anyone.
You don't have a word for it. Half of you is convinced it wouldn't count anyway.
It wasn't a priest. A deacon, a brother, a teacher, the coach. Two of the 31 on the diocese's list were deacons.
You stayed in the parish. Your kids made their First Communion there.
His name is nowhere. Neither were Mako's or Wade's, until two men filed.
You live in Pennsylvania or New York now, or anywhere. Half the people who grew up at the Shore left the Shore.

Parishes and schools covered

Any parish, any parish school, any diocesan high school of the Diocese of Trenton, in Burlington, Mercer, Monmouth or Ocean County, any year since 1881, and the parishes of Middlesex, Somerset, Hunterdon and Warren counties for the years before November 19, 1981, when they were still Trenton's. Named in the complaints on this page: St. Pius X, Forked River · St. Gregory the Great, Hamilton Square. Named on the diocese's own list as assignments of men on it: St. Veronica, Howell · St. Rose of Lima, Freehold · Holy Angels and St. Anthony, Hamilton · Incarnation, Ewing · Corpus Christi, Willingboro · St. Agnes, Atlantic Highlands, among well over a hundred assignments. Named in the newspaper's compilation of window suits: Holy Family, Bound Brook (a Trenton parish until 1981, now Metuchen's) · Holy Assumption, Roebling · St. Ann, Keansburg · St. Mary of the Lake, Lakewood · Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Maple Shade. The rest of the 97 parishes and their schools, Notre Dame High School in Lawrenceville, St. Rose High School in Belmar, the chancery itself: we list them for one reason, the same diocese ran them. No separate record on any of them is cited here. After 1981, the Metuchen-area parishes are on the Diocese of Metuchen page. Another New Jersey diocese entirely? The Archdiocese of Newark page and the rest are a link away. Yours isn't here? That means nobody has filed yet, or we haven't found it. It does not mean nothing happened. Answer the questions and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue the Diocese of Trenton?

People have. Most recently a man in Tennessee, January 2026, against the diocese by itself. Before that, two men in Mercer County on the morning of September 14, 2021, dockets MER-L-001878-21 and MER-L-001879-21, each naming the diocese and one parish. By a newspaper's count, about 180 suits named it in the two-year window. Whether you can depends on when you were born and, if before 1971, on when you connected what happened to the harm. That's what the questions above sort out.

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

Yes. The claims that matter are against the diocese, and it is still here and not in bankruptcy. Of the 31 men on its own list, 21 are dead, so this question comes up constantly. Take the Tennessee case: Father Iazetta died in 2007, and the suit isn't against him, it's against the Diocese of Trenton, and it has a trial date on the calendar.

The priest isn't on the Diocese of Trenton list. Does that matter?

No. Neither of the two priests in the Mercer County complaints was on the list when the suits were filed, and in the December 2023 version we could read, neither is. The list is the diocese's own finding about 31 men; a court has not ruled on any of them, and nobody on this page has been criminally convicted of what's described here. If the name you know isn't there, say it on the call anyway.

What if I already took money from the church's compensation program?

Then say so on the call, first thing. Taking an award from the 2019 program meant signing a release on that claim, and a lawyer has to see the release before saying anything. Turned down, or you pulled out, or the packet is still in a drawer somewhere? Then you signed nothing, and nothing's closed.

What's the actual statute of limitations in New Jersey?

Two clocks, and you get the later one. Your 55th birthday is the first. The second runs seven years from when you reasonably worked out that the abuse did you harm, which for a lot of people is decades after the fact. The statute is N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2a, from 2019, and there's no sunset on it. People confuse it with the two-year window that shut on November 30, 2021; that was a different thing, a revival window for claims the old law had already killed. Born in 1971 or later, you're inside on age. Earlier, and it turns on the discovery facts.

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. New Jersey caps the lawyer's percentage by court rule, and that cap is on their side of the line, not yours.

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 Jersey 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.