Federal Jury Awards $2.4 Million to Survivor of Six-Year Clergy Abuse by Marist Brother Damian Galligan

Brian Elliott was eight years old in the fall of 1977 when Brother Damian Galligan, a member of the Marist Brothers of the Schools, began sexually abusing him. Galligan had met Elliott through the boy's grandmother, a Bronx parishioner, and cultivated a close relationship with the entire family. The abuse continued over six years and across multiple states.

In the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, Elliott focused on incidents that occurred in Delaware, including abuse during a 1981 trip Galligan made with him from New Jersey toward Virginia. Elliott described forced sexual contact at rest stops and other locations. He testified to suffering lasting harm: chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and alcohol abuse that followed him into adulthood.

A second man, Peter Marghella, provided corroborating videotaped deposition testimony describing a similar pattern of abuse by Galligan. By the time the case reached trial, Galligan, then 86 and living in a St. Louis retirement facility, declined to appear or defend himself, citing poor health. He had initially denied the allegations.

Raeann Warner, alongside co-counsel from Jacobs and Crumplar, P.A., and The Neuberger Firm, P.A., presented the case to a federal jury. The institutional defendants, including the Marist Brothers of the Schools and the Archdiocese of New York, had been dismissed from the case on statute-of-limitations grounds in prior proceedings. The trial proceeded against Galligan individually.

On November 18, 2013, the jury deliberated roughly 90 minutes before returning a verdict of $2.4 million: $1.4 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages. Elliott said afterward that hearing a jury confirm what Galligan had done was meaningful to him. No reduction or remittitur of the verdict has been reported in available records.