Camden County
Sexual Abuse Lawyer for Camden County, New Jersey
Sexual abuse claims arising anywhere in Camden County are heard in the Camden Vicinage, at the Camden County Hall of Justice in the City of Camden. A civil claim can be brought against the individual responsible and against the school, parish, practice or organization whose own failures allowed the abuse, and it does not depend on a criminal case having happened.
Free, confidential, and no obligation. You decide what happens next, and you can stop at any point.
Camden County, practically
Camden County covers Cherry Hill, the City of Camden, Voorhees, Gloucester Township, Haddonfield, Pennsauken, Winslow, Washington Township and Sicklerville, among others. A civil claim arising in any of them falls in the Camden Vicinage and would be heard at the Camden County Hall of Justice, 101 South 5th Street, Camden, NJ 08103, telephone (856) 650-9100.
The office is in Mount Laurel, immediately over the county line in Burlington County, and cases are taken across the whole of Camden County. A first conversation is a phone call and nothing requires you to travel.
County services
Free, confidential, independent of this office, and available whether or not you ever speak to a lawyer.
- SOLACE, the state-designated sexual violence program for Camden County, 856-227-1234, 24 hours.
- SERV, Services Empowering Rights of Victims, run by Center for Family Services for Camden, Gloucester and Cumberland counties, 1-866-295-7378. Crisis intervention, hospital, police and court accompaniment, and counseling.
- DCP&P operates four local offices in the county. The Camden Area Office is at 201 Laurel Road, Voorhees, NJ 08043.
- Camden County Police Department covers the City of Camden; individual municipalities have their own departments.
What is different about a county this size
Camden County is dense with large institutions, and that shapes these claims more than geography does.
Health care. Cooper University Health Care, whose Camden flagship is among the largest hospitals in South Jersey, Jefferson Health, and Virtua all operate here. Claims involving medical providers turn on credentialing, chaperone policy and complaint handling, which are decided at system level rather than by an individual clinician.
Education. The county contains large public districts alongside charter, private and parochial schools. Each keeps personnel files, complaint records and board minutes, and each is subject to New Jersey’s mandatory reporting requirements.
Religious organizations. The county falls within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Camden, and contains a substantial number of congregations of many faiths. Where a claim involves a parish, the governing body above it is frequently the entity holding both the records and the insurance.
The common thread is that a large organization is usually a better documented one. People often assume that suing a big institution is hopeless. In practice the opposite is closer to the truth, because the record of what it knew tends to exist.
Who can be held responsible
The person who committed the abuse, and usually the organization that put them in a position to do it: how it hired, how it supervised, what it did when a concern was raised, and whether it reported what New Jersey law required. Each of those is a separate route to a claim, and each is proved with different documents.
How institutions are held liable for sexual abuse in New Jersey
How long do you have to file in New Jersey?
If you were abused as a child, you can generally bring a civil claim in New Jersey until your 55th birthday, or within seven years of realizing that your injuries are connected to the abuse, whichever of those is later.
If you were an adult when the abuse happened, the period is generally seven years from the incident, or seven years from the point at which you connected the harm to it.
New Jersey also ran a two-year lookback window, from December 1, 2019 to November 30, 2021, during which claims that had already expired could be brought regardless of age. That window has closed. It is worth being clear about, because people hear that it closed and conclude they have missed everything, when the ordinary deadlines above are separate and often still leave years.
Which of these applies to you, and when your seven years started, depends on facts specific to you. A short confidential call will tell you where you actually stand.
Free, confidential, and no obligation. You decide what happens next, and you can stop at any point.
Questions people ask
Which towns does this cover?
Camden County includes Cherry Hill, the City of Camden, Voorhees, Gloucester Township, Haddonfield, Pennsauken, Winslow, Washington Township and Sicklerville among others. A claim arising in any of them would ordinarily be heard in the same vicinage.
Where would the case be heard?
The Camden County Hall of Justice, 101 South 5th Street, Camden, NJ 08103, telephone (856) 650-9100. In practice most claims resolve without a trial, so most people never attend.
What crisis services cover Camden County?
SOLACE is the state-designated sexual violence program, on 856-227-1234, 24 hours. SERV, operated by Center for Family Services across Camden, Gloucester and Cumberland counties, is on 1-866-295-7378 and provides crisis intervention, accompaniment and counseling. Both are free and confidential.
Where is DCP&P in Camden County?
The Division of Child Protection and Permanency has four local offices in the county, Central, North, East and South. The Camden Area Office is at 201 Laurel Road, Voorhees, NJ 08043.
Does the size of the institution matter?
It changes the evidence rather than the principle. Camden County contains some of South Jersey's largest employers in health care and education, and larger organizations generate more documentation: credentialing files, complaint logs, board minutes and written policy. That usually helps a claim rather than hindering it.
I live in Camden County but the abuse happened elsewhere in New Jersey.
That is common and it is not a problem. Where the abuse happened matters more than where you live, and cases are taken across the state regardless.