Lawrence Township schools paid $3.125 million on sexual abuse settlements

For nearly a decade, a teacher and coach at a small Cumberland County elementary school used his classroom, his truck, summer camps, and even his own shower on Saturday mornings to sexually abuse boys. And for nearly as long, the school district kept the cost of his crimes hidden from the public.

The Lawrence Township School District and its insurers have paid $3.125 million to settle three civil lawsuits brought by men who say Derek V. Hildreth abused them when they were boys. Two more lawsuits remain pending. The settlements were signed in 2015, 2019, and 2025. But the public never saw the agreements until last week.

What changed? A self-taught bulldog named John Paff, who describes himself as an open government activist and who has made a career out of suing public agencies that try to keep documents secret.

He asked for the settlement agreements under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act. The school district said no. So Paff sued.

Democratic lawmakers substantially weakened New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act with legislation signed by former Gov. Phil Murphy, who shielded more than 1,100 state, county, and local agencies and made it significantly more difficult for journalists and everyday citizens to access government documents.

Good government advocates argued that those revisions decimated the public’s right to be informed about what their elected officials do, but Gov. Rebecca ‘Mikie’ Sherrill has not proposed making it easier for citizens, journalists, or watchdog groups to obtain government documents.

In March, a Superior Court judge ordered the district to turn over every last page and to pay Paff’s court costs and legal fees.

What those pages reveal is a portrait of institutional failure stretching from the classroom to the boardroom.

Hildreth, born in 1962, taught seventh- and eighth-grade social studies at Myron L. Powell Elementary School in Cedarville, Lawrence Township. He ran the morning and after-school sports programs. He ran Creative Kids Camp, a summer program. He organized trips. He was everywhere the children were.

According to deposition testimony he gave in one of the civil cases, he used that access deliberately.

He invited the boys to his house for pizza. He bought them sports equipment. He took them to games. He told his wife he was going with his brother. He molested boys in his classroom, in his truck, at camps, in an Atlantic City hotel room during the annual teachers convention, and in the shower on Saturday mornings while his wife slept upstairs.

He forced boys to masturbate with him. He forced oral sex. He tried to have anal sex with one boy who did not want it.

“I premeditated it and planned it from the beginning,” he testified. “I failed, that I am a monster, and that I need to be sent away for help and therapy.”

He also testified that he told the court he wanted the victims to know it was not their fault. That they were the innocent ones.

Hildreth was arrested in 2011 on charges that arose from events that took place between 1999 and 2002 in Cumberland, Gloucester, Burlington, and Atlantic counties, and involved five separate victims.

Hildreth pleaded guilty to four counts, including first-degree aggravated sexual assault. He is currently incarcerated at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Avenel, with a maximum release date of May 28, 2028.

But the question that haunts the settlement documents is not what Hildreth did. It is what the adults in charge did when they first heard about it.

In his deposition, Hildreth testified that a parent complained after he asked an eighth-grade boy to accompany him to Atlantic City. School officials confronted him. They warned him not to be alone one-on-one with students. They expressed concerns about his relationships with children. They raised issues about his giving students rides.

Hildreth said he was “pretty well reamed out.”

Verbally, that is. He was not written up. He was not suspended. He was not fired. He was not reported to the police. The abuse continued for years afterward.

The largest settlement, signed in July 2025, totaled $1.25 million. The others broke down this way: $250,000 in 2019, and in 2015, five separate settlements ranging from $250,000 to $400,000. The total is $3.125 million. The taxpayers paid it.

Two additional lawsuits are still working through the courts. More names. More numbers. More public money.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Kevin P. McCann of Chance & McCann in Bridgeton represented the victims in all five lawsuits. In a July 2025 certification, he said his firm spent 821 hours on just one of the cases, took ten depositions, and fought all the way to the New Jersey Supreme Court. He also described what he called “red flags” that should have alerted the school district years before criminal charges were filed.

Reached for comment, a representative of McCann’s office said: “We intend to continue advocating for any survivors who come forward and to hold accountable not only the perpetrator, but also the schools, organizations, and institutions whose negligence allowed the abuse to occur or continue.”

The Lawrence Township Board of Education did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did board president Ed Cox, vice president Linda Miletta nor board secretary Lisa DiNovi.

The settlement agreements contain confidentiality clauses that restrict what the plaintiffs can say. Those clauses do not override the public’s right to know how a government agency spent taxpayer money. That is the law. That is why John Paff sued. And that is why, more than a decade after the first lawsuit was filed, the people of Lawrence Township finally get to see the bill.

The settlements resolve disputed claims and do not constitute admissions of liability by the school district, its insurers or any other defendants. Hildreth is in prison. The money is gone. The only thing left is the record. And now, at last, that belongs to the public.