Alleged Sayreville victim's family to meet with attorney

• Woodbridge personal injury attorney Ray Gill is scheduled to meet with an alleged victim's family next week.
• 'People who have been abused often blame themselves or feel inadequate%2C' said a leading expert.
• Gill's firm has won hundreds of millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements the last 30 years.
• Gill and his staff have begun preparing to build a case against Sayreville Public Schools.

The family of one of the victims in the alleged Sayreville High School football program's sexual assault scandal will meet with Ray Gill, a leading personal injury lawyer whose Woodbridge firm has won hundreds of millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements over the past three decades.

A founding partner of Gill & Chamas, Gill said Friday that he is scheduled to meet with the victim's family next week but has not yet been retained.

"The parents and victim are obviously concerned about notoriety, maybe being the first out of the box to enforce their rights," Gill said, speaking in general terms. "The family and the victim have to be comfortable going into a lawyer's office understanding that their identity will never be revealed because they are protected under state statute from an attorney revealing their identity."

The Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office and Sayreville Police Department are continuing their investigation into the alleged criminal acts, which were brought to the attention of the school district Oct. 3.

Gill said that if the allegations of Sayreville upperclassmen using their fingers to sodomize freshmen football teammates inside the high school locker room are proved, the district could be subject to civil lawsuits, with assistant coaches up to the superintendent being named as defendants.

"As far as liability is concerned, damages are assessed based upon the degree to which the person was injured," said Gill, whom SuperLawyers.com rated among New Jersey's Top 10 lawyers each of the past four years and whose firm in 2009 won five of the Top 20 verdicts in the state.

"It's up to a jury to determine the amount," said Gill, a 1970 graduate of Woodbridge High School, where he played football. "There is no set codification."

Gill said any damages would be predicated upon the degree to which the victim was injured physically or psychologically, adding that he believed some of the victims might already be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or other disorders.

"Over the course of my (35-year) career, I've had many cases of student on student violence, student-on-student sexual assaults leading to very deep and disturbing psychological conditions that can last a lifetime," Gill said.

F. Clark Power, a professor of psychology and education at the University of Notre Dame who presents workshops on hazing nationally through his Play Like A Champion program, said he believes the effects of the alleged abuse will vary.

"People who have been abused often blame themselves or feel inadequate, so there are all kinds of outcomes with this sort of thing," Power said. "You are talking about what is this child's upbringing, where is the child in terms of his sexual identity, is this child at a point where he can get help to process this? This is a pretty serious thing."

Gill's most high-profile case regarding a New Jersey scholastic athlete involved a wrongful death suit filed against St. Rose High School and the Diocese of Trenton by the estate of 18-year old Andrew Clark Jr., of Spring Lake Heights, who killed himself by jumping in front of a train just before he was to testify against his former baseball coach about alleged sexual misconduct. The case was settled this year for $900,000.

Another Gill client approached him this week and asked if she could refer to him a group of Sayreville parents interested in suing the Board of Education for canceling the football season. Gill declined.

"I think (shutting down the program) was the only call to make in view of what now appears to be a mass hazing," he said. "It's rape. These people complaining about lost scholarship opportunities, if they are such stellar scholars and athletes, someone should have stood up and said, 'Enough.' If these student-athletes are true leaders, you don't lead by hazing."

Gill said he and his staff are not waiting for the allegations to be proved or for criminal charges to be filed, noting that his firm already has begun preparing to meet with the victim's family.

The preparation has included an extensive background check on Sayreville head football coach George Najjar, talking with high school and college coaches about locker room supervision and consulting with educational experts, including former state Department of Education Commissioner Dr. Vito Gagliardi.

"If these allegations are true, they are reprehensible," said Gagliardi, who authored the state's training and reporting guidelines for student on student physical and sexual assault. "This is a violent act that occurred. This is not boys being boys."

Staff Writer Greg Tufaro: gtufaro@MyCentralJersey.com