If you were a student, an altar server or one of the wrestlers under Father John Capparelli, we believe you.

Ordained in 1980. Out of parish work by 1989, suspended from all of it by 1992, and teaching ninth-grade math in Newark a year after that. In 2011, more than two dozen men told the Star-Ledger the same story about him. The Archdiocese of Newark put his name on its own list in February 2019, three and a half weeks before he was found dead in Nevada. The claims that are still moving run against the Archdiocese, and that is what this page is about.

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Looking for the Archdiocese page? Archdiocese of Newark survivors.

This applies to you no matter what

It was wrestling. Bathing suits, a camera, a rec room with the door shut. You've spent thirty years telling yourself that isn't the same thing as what happens to other people. The men who went to the Star-Ledger in 2011 said exactly that about themselves. The law doesn't grade it the way you've been grading it.
He is dead. He was found shot in his home in Nevada in March 2019. The suits filed since then are against the Archdiocese of Newark and, in one case, Holy Trinity in Westfield, and both are very much here.
A lawyer told you, years ago, that it was too late. And in 2011, say, that lawyer was right: two years past your eighteenth birthday was all New Jersey gave you. That rule is gone. It went in 2019. Ask again.
You never told anyone, or you told your mother and she handled it with one phone call and it was never mentioned again. That is most of the stories on the record.
You went along with it, went back, even liked him for a while. So did nearly everyone he picked. That is how it worked, and it changes nothing about a claim.
You're asking for a brother, a husband, a friend who was one of his and can't do this himself. Reach out anyway.

Father John Capparelli: what the public record says, and when

None of what follows is ours. It is the Archdiocese of Newark, two Superior Court filings, the State Board of Examiners, the Henderson police and the reporters who covered them, and every line links to its source. Capparelli was never charged with a crime and denied everything, on the record, in 2011. The Archdiocese's list is that list's finding, nothing more. The word for everything else below is allegation.

1989 to 1993

The Archdiocese removed Capparelli from parish ministry in 1989 and, later that year, he spent several months at a New Mexico treatment center for priests. In 1992 it suspended him from any priestly duties, without laicizing him. In 1993 the Newark public schools hired him to teach math. Star-Ledger, November 22, 2011.

July 2011

Andrew Dundorf sued. He was 48 then, a Somerset County man. Superior Court in Newark. His complaint alleges more than a decade of abuse, 1970s and 1980s, at parishes, on trips to Disney World and at a New York Boy Scout camp where Capparelli was director; Capparelli's lawyer denied it, and so did Capparelli. Star-Ledger, October 30, 2011.

December 14, 2011, and 2012

Richard Fitter was the second. He filed in Superior Court in Newark, and what his complaint alleged was repeated sexual touching in 1982 and 1983; he was 15, and Capparelli was teaching at Oratory Prep. Both suits named the Archdiocese of Newark, and Dundorf's named the Boy Scouts of America too, because the camp was theirs. By then at least 24 other men had come forward with similar accounts. Both settled in 2012. No figure was made public. BishopAccountability.org, Newark summary.

June 30, 2013

His two mathematics teaching certificates were revoked, effective this date, by the New Jersey State Board of Examiners (docket 1112-159, order of April 12, 2013). He gave them up rather than sit through a hearing; the order says so, and it also says he admitted none of it. State Board of Examiners order.

February 13, 2019

The Archdiocese of Newark put out its list of clergy with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor, and Capparelli is on it: 'Multiple' in the victims column, status permanently removed from ministry and laicized. Being on the list, the Archdiocese says, is not an admission and not a finding of guilt. Archdiocese of Newark.

March 9, 2019

He was 70. Shot, in his own kitchen, in Henderson, Nevada; police treated it as a homicide, and by April they had a warrant out for a suspect on murder and robbery charges. NBC News.

July 13, 2020

Nine complaints were filed against the Archdiocese of Newark under New Jersey's 2019 law. Two of them describe Capparelli: one plaintiff alleges abuse in about 1989 at St. Theresa in Kenilworth, the other from about 1988 to 1994 at Holy Trinity in Westfield. Union News Daily.

November 2021

A man who says he was 15 when it happened, more than forty years earlier, filed in Essex County Superior Court against the Archdiocese of Newark and Holy Trinity Church in Westfield. The complaint describes youth activities at the parish and 'unpermitted sexual contact.' NJ.com, November 12, 2021.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from November 2021. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who answers for what Father Capparelli is accused of

Not him. He's dead, and there was never much there to go after. Who gets sued is the Archdiocese of Newark, in 2011 and again in the 2020 and 2021 cases, and you don't need a law degree to see why. It ordained him. It gave him four parishes, a prep school and a hospital. It yanked him out of parish work in 1989. Every complaint, under the pleading language, comes down to one claim, that the Archdiocese put him in front of children, had reason to know what he was, and kept it to itself.

Some of that isn't even in dispute. It sent him to a treatment center for priests in 1989 and suspended him in 1992, and his name didn't go on a list until 2019, twenty-seven years after that. The Newark school district that hired him in 1993 found out from a newspaper.

Two other names come up. Holy Trinity Church in Westfield, which is a defendant in the 2021 case along with the Archdiocese. And the Boy Scouts of America, a defendant back in the 2011 suit, since the camp was theirs. So if it was Scout camp and not a parish, say so in the questions above; it changes which door a lawyer knocks on.

One more thing, said plainly. The Archdiocese's own list has him as substantiated, with multiple victims. It also says, in the same breath, that being on the list proves nothing. A lawyer will know what to make of that. You don't have to.

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

New Jersey rewrote this in 2019, and the rewrite is permanent. Under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2a, a claim for sexual abuse of a child can be filed any time before the survivor turns 55, or within seven years of the day they reasonably connected what happened to the harm it did, whichever comes later. There is no close date on that. The separate two-year window that let older claims in, December 2019 through November 30, 2021, has closed, and we won't pretend otherwise.

What that means for his years. Born in 1971 or later, you are under 55 and can file on age alone; that is the whole reason we ask. Born earlier, and it turns on the seven years: when did you first understand this was what it was, and what it cost you? For a lot of people that day was 2011, when the Star-Ledger ran his picture, or February 2019, when his name went on the list, or the morning you found this page. That is a fact question, and it's a lawyer's question, not a calendar's.

So the honest answer is: for most of the boys who knew him between the late 1970s and 1989, the door is open. For some it depends. Either way it's a twenty-minute conversation, not something you can settle from a web page.

Your situation still qualifies even if

It wasn't Capparelli. Another priest at the parish, a coach, a Scout leader; the claim is against the institution either way.
Nothing happened that you'd call sex. Wrestling, a camera, hands that went where they shouldn't have. That is precisely what the record describes, and it is what the Archdiocese's list calls substantiated.
You wrestled for him and never felt anything was wrong until a long time later. The 2021 plaintiff waited more than forty years.
You settled with the Archdiocese once, or you signed something. Bring it; a lawyer needs to see it before saying anything.
You live in New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, anywhere. The claim stays in New Jersey and you don't have to.
Your family loved him. Plenty did; he was Father John.

Where he was

Our Lady of Fatima, North Bergen · Oratory Prep, Summit, where he taught math in the early 1980s · Holy Trinity, Westfield, and its parish school · St. Theresa, Kenilworth · temporary chaplain at Valley Hospital, Ridgewood · youth minister at a New Providence parish · a Boy Scout camp in upstate New York, where he was camp director, and his own vacation house up there · after 1992, Newark public schools (Barringer 9 Success Academy among them, 1993 to 2011) and an adjunct post at Seton Hall University. The Archdiocese's list gives the first five; the rest come from the Star-Ledger's reporting. If your contact with him was somewhere else, tell us anyway.

Questions people are asking

Did he ever face criminal charges?

No. Not charged, not convicted; in 2011 he denied all of it, on the record. Everything that exists is civil: two suits in 2011 (settled in 2012), a state licensing order in 2013, the Archdiocese's list in 2019, and the complaints against the Archdiocese in 2020 and 2021.

He's dead. Can I still sue?

Yes. The lawsuits were never really about him. Look at who's named: the Archdiocese of Newark in the 2020 and 2021 complaints, Holy Trinity Church in Westfield in one of them, and back in 2011 the Boy Scouts of America too. The theory is that the institution knew, or should have, and let it go on.

Is there a statute of limitations for this in New Jersey?

There is, though since 2019 it's a long one. Under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2a you can file until you turn 55, or within seven years of reasonably discovering that the abuse caused your harm, whichever is later. The 2019 to 2021 revival window has closed; the age-55 and seven-year rules have not, and they don't expire.

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.

Will anyone find out I came forward?

Not from us. Your answers go to one person at ME2, and the 2020 and 2021 complaints against the Archdiocese were brought under John Doe names, which New Jersey allows. A lawyer walks you through that before anything is filed, and nothing is filed unless you say so.

Who was Father John Capparelli?

A Newark archdiocesan priest, ordained in 1980, and to the boys a wrestling coach, at his parishes and at Oratory Prep in Summit, and a Scout camp director in New York. The timeline above has his years in order, with sources: out of parishes 1989, out of ministry 1992, teaching math in Newark's public schools 1993 to 2011, dead in Nevada in March 2019, three and a half weeks after the Archdiocese put him on its list of clergy with substantiated allegations.

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.