POLITICO is reporting that Seton Hall University’s Board of Regents sent out a university-wide email on Thursday January 23, 2025, “vigorously defending” its new president after the news organization reported in December that he had been implicated in an internal report on sexual abuse.
Politico’s initial report, “He knew of sex abuse allegations on campus. Now he’s university president,” was about an internal investigation that implicated Seton Hall President Monsignor Joseph Reilly in the sex abuse scandal of defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, concluding Reilly knew of sexual abuse allegations on campus but did not report them.
That initial POLITICO report, which was published about six weeks after Reilly’s investiture as university president, prompted some state lawmakers to call for Reilly’s resignation, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has urged the university to release its report.
In Thursday’s follow-up story, POLITICO quoted an email from Seton Hall Board of Regents Chair Hank D’Alessandro saying the university governing board “continues to stand by” Reilly. “Recent news stories have falsely and unfairly portrayed him,” POLITICO reported that the email stated.
POLITICO also pointed out that “Seton Hall did not respond to a message asking what specific news stories were false. It has also not sought a correction to POLITICO’s reporting.”
According to POLITICO’s story: “Reilly was not accused of abuse himself. But investigators in 2019 recommended, pursuant to a responsive action plan the school’s governing body adopted, that Reilly be removed as a seminary leader and member of university boards, according to interviews and documents previously reviewed by POLITICO.”
