Ex-student who alleged sex abuse by monk at elite N.J. Catholic school wins $5M in damages
(NBC) The first civil trial against the church in the state involved the former Delbarton School student who said he was sexually abused in the mid-1970s.
A former student at the elite Delbarton School in New Jersey who said he was sexually assaulted a half-century ago by a monk at the school has been awarded $5 million in damages.
The historic verdict in the first civil trial against the Catholic Church in New Jersey was reached by a panel of four women and two men Wednesday after less than two days of deliberation.
“We are extremely disappointed in the verdict in this trial,” the school said in a statement shortly after the verdict was announced. “We do not believe that the damages awarded are either fair or reasonable, and our legal representatives are considering all legal options.”
There was no immediate comment from the former student, who had been identified only as T.M. during the five-week trial in Morris County Superior Court, or his lawyers who have been barred by the judge from speaking publicly about the case.
Nor is the trial over. The jurors will return Tuesday to determine whether the Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey, which runs the school, should also pay punitive damages to T.M., who was 15 when he was assaulted.
Despite the passage of time, the jury agreed unanimously that T.M. had been assaulted and found that the Rev. Richard Lott, who remains a priest but is no longer a monk at Delbarton, was liable for 35% of the compensatory damages.
The all-boys Catholic prep school in northern New Jersey, and its connected monastery, St. Mary’s Abbey, are responsible for the rest of the compensatory damages, or $3.25 million, the school said in its statement.
“Crucially, the jury unanimously found that St. Mary’s Abbey and Delbarton School did not violate the New Jersey Child Sex Abuse Act, meaning we did not know of the alleged abuse and there was no intentional misconduct,” the school’s statement said.
But one of the crucial pieces of evidence introduced at the trial was a 2018 deposition from the late Abbott Brian Clarke in which he admitted destroying the letter T.M. sent him accusing Lott of assault “because it’s bad for the reputation of a school when there is sexual abuse associated with it.”
T.M.’s case is the first of 39 pending abuse cases to go to trial against Delbarton, where the tuition is $48,725 a year. The Morristown school boasts well-known alumni such as New York Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe, “Game of Thrones” star Peter Dinklage and the sons of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Now 65, T.M. also accused the Benedictine order of “enabling that abuse” in the lawsuit, which was filed earlier this year and named as defendants the school, the abbey, the monks and Lott.
All the defendants denied the allegations.
On the stand, T.M. alleged that Lott plied him with liquor at an off-campus party on New Year’s Eve 1975 before driving him to the barn on the grounds of Delbarton where Lott lived. He said he was “tipsy” when Lott pulled down his pants and performed oral sex on him.
T.M. said he fled the barn after it was over. He said he remembered thinking: “I am never going to forget this. It just felt like my brain was seared with what had just happened.”
In the lawsuit, T.M. said he reported the alleged assault to Clarke in a letter after he graduated in 1977.
On the stand, T.M. said Clarke, who died in 2019, told him that Lott had admitted abusing him and that he would deal with the monk.
Lott, 89, testified that on New Year’s Eve 1975 he was more than an hour south of the Delbarton campus at a church in Lakewood, New Jersey.
But Lott confirmed that Clarke confronted him about T.M.’s abuse allegation.
“And did you, at that time, tell Abbot Brian Clarke that it was impossible for you to have abused Tom because you were someplace else?” one of T.M.’s lawyers, Michael Geibelson, asked.
“He didn’t ask me that and I simply denied the allegation,” Lott replied.
Lott also testified that he has never ever had sex with anybody.
“Is it your testimony that you have never had sexual contact with anyone,” Geibelson asked.
“Yes,” Lott replied.
The legal team representing Lott and the other defendants tried to cast doubt on T.M.’s claim that the encounter in the barn affected his life by pointing out that he maintained sporadic contact with Lott in the years after the incident.
The jury disagreed.
Back in 2018, Delbarton publicly acknowledged that at least 30 men had come forward with allegations that, over the course of three decades, they had been victimized by 13 past or current priests and monks at the school — and by a lay faculty member who is now retired.
Then-Abbot Richard Cronin and the headmaster, the Rev. Michael Tidd, in a letter dated July 20, 2018, said that eight civil actions against the school and St. Mary’s Abbey had been settled and seven remained.
Delbarton, in the letter, said it had notified the Morris County prosecutor’s office of each allegation and continued to work closely with the office through its investigation.
“In every single case that was settled, there was no admission of liability by the order,” Greg Gianforcaro, a lawyer who represented some of the accusers, said before T.M.’s trial got underway.
After the initial lawsuits in 2018, more than 30 people have come forward with allegations of sexual abuse against the school’s monks, and have either filed their own lawsuits or joined existing cases, Gianforcaro said.
The suits were made possible by New Jersey’s Child Victims Act, which opened a two-year window in 2019 allowing people to file civil claims of sexual abuse even when that abuse fell outside the statute of limitations. It is unclear how many cases are still pending against Delbarton; a spokesperson for the school said they could not provide that number.
Corky Siemaszko
NBC News Digital
October 9, 2025
