The Archdiocese of New York charged in a legal filing Saturday that an insurance company set up a fraudulent website and a fake victims’ advocacy group, which aimed at pressuring the archdiocese to drop a major lawsuit over insurance coverage for sexual abuse claims.
The archdiocese said Jan. 31 that the Chubb insurance company, with whom it has been in protracted litigation of coverage for sex abuse liability, should be held liable for fraud over the deceptive website.
According to an archdiocesan motion filed Saturday, “Chubb deliberately and fraudulently disguised itself as a third-party ‘victim’s rights’ organization and hid the organization’s true identity for years, all the while faithfully pretending to ‘defend’ the [archdiocese] and professing a commitment to a collaborative approach that was empathetic, respectful, and there for the [archdiocese] when they needed Chubb most.
“Quite to the contrary,” the archdiocese wrote, Chubb willfully undertook to undermine its policyholders in a years-long corporate scheme to protect its own financial interests, to the detriment of its insureds and survivors.”
The Archdiocese of New York and its longtime liability insurer have been engaged in litigation since June 2023, after Chubb sued over an $859 million archdiocesan insurance claim, which would cover more than 3,000 cases of sexual abuse against the archdiocese.
In that lawsuit, Chubb accused the archdiocese of covering up child sexual abuse, and concealing its knowledge of abusive actors in order to shift responsibility to its insurer.
In that year, a Chubb spokesperson told reporters that cover-ups didn’t fit into its insurance policy obligations.
“You can’t buy insurance for intended acts the ADNY has admitted: concealing, tolerating and abetting child molestation, which continued for decades because of the ADNY’s cover-up and its unconscionable failure to stop the abuse when it had the knowledge and opportunity to do so,” a Chubb spokesperson said in 2023. “That’s what this case is about.”
While the archdiocese settled cases, it had nearly 1,500 remaining when it countersued Chubb in 2024, with the archdiocese claiming that the insurer was attempting to evade its obligations “to settle covered claims which would bring peace and healing to victim-survivors.”
Litigation has spanned years, and as it continues, the archdiocese has made serious staffing cuts and sold its Manhattan headquarters to a real estate developer for more $100 million.
Attorneys for alleged victims, meanwhile, say the archdiocese has not moved quickly enough to provide justice for people harmed by the archdiocese.
The lawsuits between Chubb and the archdiocese might have taken a major turn last week, with a new archdiocesan claim of serious ethical breaches on the part of its insurance company.
According to the motion filed Saturday, Chubb began in 2023 “fraudulently posing as a victims’ rights organization known as the ‘Church Accountability Project’ and attempting to undermine and weaken the [archdiocesan] defense in an attempt to elevate Chubb’s own financial interests (and leverage in the dispute).”
According to the claim, Chubb launched a Church Accountability Project website, which criticized the archdiocese implicitly for its lawsuit against Chubb.
Archived versions of the site appear to support that claim.
The site, which did not originally indicate it was funded by Chubb, said the NY archdiocese was “deploying all of its VAST resources to deny its victims the compensation they rightfully deserve.”
An archived version of the site from April 2025 urged visitors to “hold the Archdiocese of New York accountable for its actions,” and featured a seemingly doctored photo of Dolan — its own insurance client — appearing to laugh maniacally, as $100 bills floated around him.
“With hundreds of millions of dollars on the table, there is ZERO EXCUSE the Archdiocese of New York can legitimately give to stall the just and rightful compensation any longer – it’s time for ADNY to drop the lawsuits and fairly compensate the hundred of victims of sexual abuse and assault NOW,” the website said.
According to the motion, the website constituted a “shadow campaign” against the archdiocese, seemingly designed to create pressure for the archdiocese to drop its lawsuit against Chubb and its defense in abuse cases, and pay sexual abuse claims from its own resources.
“At the very times Chubb was purporting to defend the [archdiocese] against .. serious allegations,” the filing said, “Chubb was endorsing such allegations in furtherance of its scheme.”
That alleged fraud, the archdiocese took place even while Chubb knew “that other policyholders have gone bankrupt under similar circumstances.”
“Chubb has used the guise of defending as a smoke screen to delay, obstruct, and stonewall resolution” of abuse claims, the archdiocese said, “while Chubb secretly undermines and seeks to weaken the [archdiocese].
The current version of the Church Accountability Project website identifies it as a Chubb website — a change the archdiocese said was made after the ruse was discovered, with the company “apparently hoping to use the distraction of the holiday season as a cover.”
Chubb has not yet responded in court to the archdiocesan motion, which would formally see fraud listed to the claims of its countersuit.
Curiously, the Church Accountability Project claim is not the first time that a party to the dispute has raised questions about outside advocacy groups.
In November 2023, a group called the Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation placed a full-page ad in the New York Times, arguing that “it’s time for Chubb to stop denying coverage and start taking responsibility to ensure that survivors get the restitution they deserve.”
Soon after, an attorney for Chubb suggested the group was aligned with the archdiocese.
In a Nov. 2023 letter, a Chubb lawyer wrote that the coalition “came out of nowhere and is not transparent about who is funding it.”
According to the New York Daily News, the lawyer asserted that “there are well-documented extremely close professional, political and personal connections between current and former ADNY officials and people affiliated with the CJCC” — seemingly pointing to several professional connections between the archdiocesan chancellor and the coalition’s executive director, who had worked together in professional politics.
But in June 2024, the Archdiocese of New York said that there was no relationship between the archdiocese and the advocacy group.
“The fact that two individuals worked together years ago is immaterial and simply a further attempt by Chubb to muddy the waters as they try to find a way to turn their back on victim-survivors in an attempt to protect their multi-billion dollar bottom line,” archdiocesan spokesman Joseph Zwilling told the Daily News.
In June 2025, the advocacy group began a campaign urging New York’s governor to compel insurance companies to pay abuse claims filed against dioceses in the state.
The Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation had some $650,000 in revenue in 2024, and spent roughly $500,000 on communication and other consulting fees, according to its tax documents.
On Friday, the Archdiocese of New York will see the installation of a new leader, Archbishop Ronald Hicks, who until now has led the Diocese of Joliet, Illinois.