A judge has denied a request by a Delbarton School sexual abuse survivor for sweeping sanctions against the Benedictine monks who run the school. But he left the door open for the plaintiff to press on.
Superior Court Judge Louis Sceusi said the motion was filed through the wrong legal channel at the wrong time — but pointedly declined to clear the religious organization of the underlying accusations of concealing evidence before a landmark trial last year.
“The Court finds that the threshold issue in Plaintiff’s motion for sanctions is its untimeliness and procedural impropriety, rather than the underlying merits of the alleged discovery violations,” Sceusi wrote in a seven-page opinion.
Attorney Rayna Kessler, representing the plaintiff — identified only as T.M. for privacy reasons — said Thursday she will ask the court to reconsider via another post-verdict process.
“We will keeping fighting because all survivors deserve the full truth, not a trial record shaped by hidden evidence,” Kessler said.
Last fall she won a $5 million civil award for T.M.’s pain and suffering, in New Jersey’s first trial of alleged sex abuse by the Catholic Church. Yet despite jurors determining that her client had been abused by a Delbarton monk in 1976, they did not find “malice or wanton disregard” necessary for punitive damages against the Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey (OSBNJ), which operates Delbarton and St. Mary’s Abbey in Morris Township.
Kessler said subsequent cases revealed OSBNJ had lied and withheld four investigative reports that could have altered that outcome. Her motion asked Sceusi for remedies including a do-over of the punitive phase of the trial, holding the abbey in contempt, and even jailing defense lawyers and abbey officials.
The judge rejected such relief as “grossly disproportionate to the alleged conduct,” especially given the “procedural history” of the case and the fact that he already entered his final judgment on May 11, 2026.
Defense attorneys Stefani Field and James Barletti did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In oral arguments last week, Field termed the requested sanctions “outrageous.”
“In no way did OSBNJ conceal or withhold any documents — that’s a blatant misrepresentation,” Field told the judge.
But in legal briefs, the defense team argued the reports were properly withheld, as protected work product under attorney-client privilege — and that jurors heard essential information at trial. Not rebutted: A central accusation by T.M. that defense lawyers denied the existence of the reports to discovery referee Judge Freda Wolfson in 2024.
Last October, after a trial spanning weeks, the jury found T.M. had been sexually abused in a campus barn early on New Year’s Day 1976, when he was 15, by a monk known as Father Richard Lott, now 90. The jury assigned 65 percent of the fault to the abbey and 35 percent to Lott. The former cleric testified he was away at another parish at the time of the alleged incident.
The reports at the heart of the latest motion remain under seal. They were written by the abbey’s own private investigator, Nicholas Susalis, based on interviews conducted between 2013 and 2018 with four monks who are all now deceased.
T.M.’s lawyers have argued the reports may contain evidence of additional allegations involving Lott. The reports surfaced in relation to a separate consolidated lawsuit involving dozens of other Delbarton abuse claims, according to briefs for the plaintiff.
“TM spent years fighting to uncover the truth and then endured a seven-week trial without evidence we contend Delbarton was ordered to disclose,” Kessler said in a statement Thursday.
“The Court’s ruling was procedural and did not reach the merits of Delbarton’s conduct. TM deserved a trial on the full record, and we will continue to seek relief because a party should not be rewarded for hiding court-ordered discovery long enough to reach a verdict.”
Other legal avenues remain for T.M., Judge Sceusi noted in his decision. One is a post-judgment motion for a new trial under Rule 4:49; another is a motion under Rule 4:50, which governs relief from a judgment based on grounds such as newly discovered evidence, fraud, or misrepresentation. A third route is an appeal to the state Appellate Division.
OSBNJ lost its own bid for a retrial in December; an appeal of the $5 million compensatory award is anticipated.
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