Warren County has agreed to pay more than $2 million to two men who said they were sexually abused decades ago by the late Sheriff Edward Bullock, ending years of litigation involving a once-powerful figure who used his office to prey upon young boys.
The two settlements mark the conclusion of a series of lawsuits that accused the county of turning a blind eye as Bullock — its top officer for 10 years — raped vulnerable boys who wound up in his custody.
Of the money, $1.9 million went to a man who said Bullock regularly sexually assaulted him in the late 1980s while he was a teenager in the care of Warren County’s juvenile services network. His suit said Bullock would transport him to and from court hearings in Belvidere, using the pretext of those trips to abuse him repeatedly.
Another $135,000 was paid to a man who charged he was 15 years old in 1979 when Bullock, an undersheriff at the time, drugged and raped him as he hitchhiked to New York City.
The agreements bring to more than $9 million the bill the county and its insurers footed to resolve claims involving Bullock, whose predilections were allegedly an open secret in county offices. According to legal filings, Bullock was even known for having a type: “blond, blue-eyed kids,” as a former probation officer disclosed.
NJ Advance Media obtained the settlements last week following public records requests. Warren County, which had long fought the suits, admitted no wrongdoing in the agreements.
In a statement Friday, Warren County said it was “pleased” to have brought finality to the cases, noting they “related to facts that took place over 30 years ago, long before the current Board of County Commissioners were elected to office.”
“The allegations made in these cases are not reflective of the hard working and dedicated employees of Warren County,” the statement said. “Since the first allegations related to former Sheriff Bullock were raised, the county has proactively taken steps to ensure all county employees are well trained to identify potential issues concerning sexual misconduct and to report concerns to law enforcement for immediate action.”
The attorneys representing each of the men did not return requests for comment.
The abuse spurred four lawsuits, two of which the county settled in 2022 and 2023 for $7 million. Those cases also involved boys who charged Bullock assaulted them while they were in county custody, including one whose suit said he was 8 years old when the sheriff began molesting him, culminating in rape when he was 11.
Bullock — an imposing man at 6-foot-6 and 300 pounds — was sheriff from 1982 to 1991. He abruptly resigned from office after he was caught in a State Police sting soliciting sex from an undercover trooper posing as an underage boy, a crime for which Bullock served nine months in jail.
The ex-sheriff died in 2015 at age 86, a few months after a jury deadlocked in a criminal trial on charges involving the man who alleged he was raped at 11. A filing in the hitchhiker case cited the potential that “dozens of boys” in total were abused by Bullock.
As sheriff, Bullock oversaw the transports of county prisoners and had access to children as they were shuttled from the courthouse to the county’s youth shelter and juvenile detention facilities. The lawsuits said Bullock would volunteer to drive the children alone, with the assaults occurring on secluded roadsides and in his office, his Lopatcong Township home and the home of a friend who participated in some of them.
The lawsuits were battled for years by Warren County, which denied culpability in the abuse. Its tactics drew the ire of the judge who long oversaw the cases, Thomas C. Miller, who once lambasted the county over its “scorched-earth litigation strategy.”
The first lawsuit was filed in 2013 and went to trial in Somerset County in June 2022. But before the jury could deliver a verdict, the case settled for $5 million.
The second settlement, which involved a case filed in 2015, was inked for $2 million in March 2023.
County records show that the $1.9 million settlement was agreed to in October. The hitchhiker case was the final to settle and was signed in February.
It was the only suit that did not involve Bullock’s tenure as sheriff. It was filed in 2020 by Jack Jeffress of Los Angeles, who was the first accuser to allow himself to be publicly identified by name.
Jeffress, now 60, said he was hitching rides alone from his home in Indiana when Bullock picked him up in Easton, Pennsylvania, which is just across the Delaware River from Warren County. He said Bullock was wearing a badge and a gun and driving an unmarked police car. When the undersheriff told him to get in, his lawsuit said, he complied.
Jeffress said Bullock drove him to Phillipsburg, where he was drugged and raped by Bullock and another man for several days, before he escaped through a bathroom window.
The other recently settled suit involved a man identified as R.M. in court filings, who said he was “targeted and repeatedly abused” by Bullock from 1987 to 1989 when he was 15 to 17 years old and under the care of the county.
The man, now 52, claimed Bullock assaulted him “literally dozens of times” during transports. The suit said the boy tried to report the abuse to other county officials, confiding that Bullock was “a bad man” who “touches kids.”
The suit said those complaints were ignored, with one official telling the boy that he “didn’t have a choice” on whether he rode with Bullock.
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Riley Yates may be reached at ryates@njadvancemedia.com.
