Nearly 2,000 Kids Sexually Abused By Catholic Clergy: Attorney General

ILLINOIS — Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul released a bombshell report listing the names more than 400 Catholic priests, religious brothers and clerics he says abused 1,997 children across all six Catholic dioceses in Illinois.

The report concludes a multi-year investigation and details decades of child sexual abuse by members of Catholic clergy, Raoul said.

The nearly 700-page The Attorney General’s Report on Catholic Clergy Child Sex Abuse in Illinois was released Tuesday and contains detailed narratives of abuse, many written in consultation with survivors based on their experiences, officials said.

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"I was raised and confirmed in the Catholic church and sent my children to Catholic schools. I believe the church does important work to support vulnerable populations; however, as with any presumably reputable institution, the Catholic church must be held accountable when it betrays the public’s trust," Raoul said in a statement. "These perpetrators may never be held accountable in a court of law, but by naming them here, the intention is to provide a public accounting and a measure of healing to survivors who have long suffered in silence."

In 2018, the investigation began under former Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s watch and continued when Raoul was elected in 2020. Investigators and attorneys from the AG’s office reviewed 100,000 pages of documents and conducted 600 interviews with survivors.

The attorney general’s report names the 451 Catholic clerics and religious brothers compared to the 103 substantiated child sex abusers listed by the six Illinois Catholic dioceses, which include Bellville, Rockford, Joliet, Peoria, Springfield and the Archdiocese of Chicago. A substantiated claim is defined as an admission by the clergy abuser that he or she violated their position of power and trust to sexually abuse children.

Cardinal Blase Cupich, of the Archdiocese of Chicago, issued a retaliatory response to Raoul’s allegations that Illinois Catholic dioceses “underreported” sex abuse claims against children. “We have not studied the report in detail but have concerns about data that might be misunderstood or are presented in ways that could be misleading,” the cardinal said.

Cupich went on to say in a bullet-pointed list that the 451 names “disclosed” in the investigation were already listed on all six dioceses’ websites. Further, “all were reported to civil authorities, none were undisclosed, none were ‘hiding in plain sight’ since at least 2002.”

“The Attorney General himself distinguished between dioceses and religious orders, saying ‘this was an investigation of the dioceses, not the orders,’ recognizing they are different,” Cupich said. “However, their totals include both.”

The Chicago Archdiocese’s list of credibly accused or convicted clergy, does list clergy found by their orders to be substantiated, Cupich said.

“The Archdiocese of Chicago fully cooperates with law enforcement, including with the Attorney General’s investigation," Cupich added. "We have made our employees available for interviews and provided access to hundreds of thousands of documents. We are committed to continuously reviewing our policies and will carefully consider any changes recommended by the Attorney General. Indeed, the archdiocese has already implemented a number of recommendations the Attorney General made during the course of the investigation, such as expansion of the parameters of our website list.”

History of Handling Allegations

According to the report, prior to 1960, the Archdiocese of Chicago used the “confession model” to absolve priests who admitted to or were accused of sexually abusing a child, usually in the confessional box with a screen to protect the confessor’s identity. A Catholic clergy’s proclivities to sexually abuse children were often looked upon as a moral failure or weakness.

From the 1960s through 1992, the report said, the “therapeutic model” was adopted by the Chicago archdiocese, as allegations of criminal sexual abuse by clergy mounted. Priests accused of child sex abuse were given a professional psychiatric evaluation, and if warranted, treatment.

“Once the priest was deemed 'rehabbed,' the cleric was placed back in ministry,” according to the attorney general’s report.

Often, key officials in the new parish were not informed of the priest’s prior history of sex abuse, and more victims, usually children, were sought out and abused, the AG report maintains.

All of that changed in 1981, when a school official at St. Edna Catholic Church in Arlington Heights, sent a letter to the late Cardinal John Cody in 1982, stating that associate pastor Fr. Robert Mayer, had removed his clothes while socializing with children and provided them with drugs and alcohol. The letter further outlined other allegations of inappropriate behavior, including Mayer making sexual advances towards a teenager, indecent exposure and plying children with drugs and alcohol.

Cody died in April 1982, and Joseph Bernardin was elevated to the college of cardinals in August of that year.

The report details how in 1983, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin established a vicar charged with investigating allegations against priests as they came up, although the vicar lacked any training to investigate such claims.

According to the AG report, the archdiocese transferred Mayer to another parish, St. Stephen in Des Plaines in 1983. The archdiocese also settled a civil lawsuit involving allegations of sexual abuse of at least one child by Mayer in 1984.

Mayer remained in ministry, and was investigated by police in 1987 for alleged oral sexual contact with a child. The AG report maintains that Bernardin simply signed an agreement with Mayer mandating Mayer avoid unsupervised contact with anyone under 21, and transferred Mayer again, this time to Saint Dionysius in 1990, and made him pastor of Saint Odilo that same year.

A draft of a memo containing a message that Cardinal Bernardin was to deliver to Mayer in 1991, noted that Mayer had “repeatedly been the subject of sexual impropriety, and yet [had] refused to modify [his] behavior.” Mayer was indicted by a grand jury in 1991 for aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a child and eventually served prison time.

On October 25, 1991, Cardinal Bernardin sent a letter to local Catholics acknowledging the archdiocese had made mistakes in its efforts to prevent child sex abuse, and committing not to repeat those mistakes. Thus, a nine-member independent review board was created in 1992, composed of three lay people (psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker), three priests (including a priest in parish ministry) and three representatives of the church at large. The review board adopted strict policies for the treatment of predator priests before they could be returned to ministry based on therapeutic reports of progress, in addition to monitoring and restrictions, such as limiting the clergy’s contact with children under 21.

In 2002, Bernardin’s independent review board was further modified to provide more stringent policies to deal with child sex abuse allegations.

Although significant steps have been made, Raoul’s report includes 50 pages of recommended policies, which the attorney general’s office strongly encourages the dioceses to enact to further improve the handling of future allegations of child sex abuse. Those recommendations range from how the dioceses communicate with and support survivors, investigate and make determinations related to alleged abuse, as well as disclosure and transparency protocols, mediation and compensation, and the handling of allegations related to religious orders.

Prior to Tuesday’s release, SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) released a written statement that Illinois dioceses released a “sudden” news release last week detailing each diocese’s policies and procedures for protecting children and vulnerable adults from clergy sexual abuse.

While grateful for the Attorney General’s years’ long investigation and the 600 survivors who availed themselves to AG investigators, SNAP maintained that it still believes the Catholic bishops lied.

“There is no questioning the facts of the report — until 2018 when the investigation began, hierarchs in every Illinois diocese kept known abusers under wraps, declined to include them on their accused lists, and refused to acknowledge the truth that survivors of abuse who came forward to make a report shared with them," SNAP's statement said. "It is to us, in a word, disgusting that these supposed shepherds would lie so blatantly. It is, in a word, arrogant that they believed their lies would somehow remain secret even in the face of a secular investigation. We are grateful that their disgusting arrogance has now been publicly exposed.”