Chicago Archdiocese Settles Priest Abuse Suit for $2.9M

Insurance Journal reported.

"The man, who is in his 20s, claims [former priest Daniel] McCormack abused him twice when he attended St. Agatha’s Catholic Church.

"McCormack was committed indefinitely in July to an Illinois facility in Rushville for sex offenders, where he has been living since 2009. He completed a five-year sentence that year for molesting five boys in the West Side Chicago parish where he worked as a priest, teacher and basketball coach.

"McCormack has been the subject of dozens of allegations of abuse, costing the archdiocese millions of dollars in settlements."

Cardinal Cupich agrees to cooperate with Illinois attorney general on clergy abuse review

Cardinal Blase Cupich said Monday he spoke with Attorney General Lisa Madigan and pledged to cooperate as Madigan's office launches an investigation into clergy abuse prompted by revelations of the Pennsylvania grand jury.

"I assured her of our full cooperation," Cupich told NBC 5. "I said, first of all, we don't mind at all because they have all our documents anyway."

The Cook and Lake County state’s attorneys office has reviewed church files, but the attorney general has not. Madigan said last week she wants to meet with Catholic officials in all six Illinois dioceses after identifying seven priests who served in Illinois from the Pennsylvania report.

Madigan on Monday released a clergy abuse hotline and website to report allegations of sexual abuse by clergy members.

continue at NBC

Illinois launches investigation into Catholic dioceses after Pennsylvania report

The Attorney General of Illinois is to set up a sex abuse enquiry in the six dioceses in the state.

“The Catholic Church has a moral obligation to provide its parishioners and the public a complete and accurate accounting of all sexually inappropriate behaviour involving priests,” Attorney General Lisa Madigan said on Thursday.

Her action follows on from the recent grand jury report in Pennsylvania that identified 1,000 alleged sex abuse victims of 300 priests during a 70-year period.

“We have reviewed the Pennsylvania grand jury report, which identifies at least seven priests with connections to Illinois,” Mrs Madigan’s office stated. “The Chicago Archdiocese has agreed to meet with me. I plan to reach out to the other dioceses in Illinois to have the same conversation and expect the bishops will agree and cooperate fully.”

continue at Catholic Herald

This will get interesting. 

Update, and by interesting I mean here are some of the cases:

Chicago Archdiocese defends record as film about Boston priest abuse nears release

In an unprecedented public relations maneuver, top Chicago Archdiocese officials met with several newspapers this week — days before the big screen release of a star-studded Hollywood drama depicting the Boston Globe’s 2002 expose on clergy sex abuse — to say, basically: “Don’t confuse us with Boston.”

Vicar General Ronald Hicks, second-in-command to Archbishop Blase Cupich, explained the proactive stance to the Sun-Times’ editorial board earlier this week.

“We think there’s a possibility that there’s going to be new energy and new questions around this and what we want to do is make sure that the media knows that Chicago is extremely different in handling the case of clerical sexual abuse of minors than Boston and how it’s being portrayed in the movie.”

continue at Chicago Sun Times

Chicago Archdiocese releasing child sex abuse files on 36 more priests

Cardinal Francis George sits for an October interview at the cardinal's residence. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

Cardinal Francis George on Thursday said the public release of the internal files of 36 priests accused of sexually abusing children shows the church’s “commitment to transparency” in one of the most disturbing chapters in the Roman Catholic Church’s history.

In a statement on the church’s website announcing the release of some 15,000 pages of once-secret documents, George said the Archdiocese of Chicago was “concerned first and foremost with bringing healing to abuse victims.”

“We cannot change the past but we hope we can rebuild trust through honest and open dialogue,” George said. “Child abuse is a crime and a sin.”

The release of the priest files is one of George’s last acts as he prepares for retirement in less than two weeks and is part of an effort by the archdiocese to put the long-running scandal behind it.

continue at Chicago Tribune

Files Show Chicago Archdiocese Hid Decades Of Child Sex Abuse

After a 13-year-old boy reported in 1979 that a priest raped him and later threatened him at gunpoint to keep quiet, the Archdiocese of Chicago assured the boy’s parents that although the cleric avoided prosecution, he would receive treatment and have no further contact with minors.

But the Rev. William Cloutier, who already had been accused of molesting other children, was returned to ministry a year later and accused of more abuse before he resigned in 1993, two years after the boy’s parents filed a lawsuit. Officials took no action against Cloutier over his earliest transgressions because he “sounded repentant,” according to internal archdiocese documents released Tuesday that show how the archdiocese tried to contain a mounting scandal over child sexual abuse.

RELATED: Read The Documents | Documents By Priest

For decades, those at the highest levels of the nation’s third-largest archdiocese moved accused priests from parish to parish while hiding the clerics’ histories from the public. The documents, released through settlements between attorneys for the archdiocese and victims, describe how the late Cardinals John Cody and Joseph Bernardin often approved the reassignments. The archdiocese removed some priests from ministry, but often years or decades after the clergy were known to have molested children.

While disturbing stories of clergy sexual abuse have wrenched the Roman Catholic Church across the globe, the newly released documents offer the broadest look yet into how one of its largest and most prominent American dioceses responded to the scandal.

continue at CBS Chicago

Also from JS: 

Records released Tuesday that document years of sexual abuse by priests in the Archdiocese of Chicago — and the actions and inactions of church officials over the years — include at least four sex abusers with ties to Wisconsin.

The St. Paul, Minn., law firm of Jeffrey Anderson made public 6,000 pages of documents involving 30 priests after eight years of negotiations with church officials over how they were to be released.

Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/newswatch/chicago-archdiocese-sex-abuse-documents-name-4-with-wisconsin-ties-b99188817z1-241340031.html#ixzz2rFDXhhbg
Follow us: @JournalSentinel on Twitter

I've said before, release of these documents is absolutely the right thing to do.  The good ol' boy network has got to go.  I don't have time to follow it closely, but some of us know through the case of Fr. Alfred Kunz that the ties of abuse to +Bernardin have long been in question.