Archdiocese Of Chicago 'Didn't Realize The Depth' Of Sex Abuse Allegations

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jan 16, 2014 3:15PM

The Archdiocese of Chicago released over 6,000 pages of documents Wednesday detailing allegations of sexual abuse by priests and publicly showed contrition for their handling of the allegations and concern for the victims and their families.

A statement to the public posted to the Archdiocese’s website regarding the release of the files reads:

The Archdiocese’s concern is for the rights of everyone involved, which both the Archdiocese and claimants acknowledge require careful consideration.

According to the Archdiocese, 95 percent of the abuse allegations occurred before 1988—none after 1996. Thirty priests were named in the documents; all of them are out of the ministry, 14 are deceased. Notably absent from the documents is Daniel McCormack, who pleaded guilty in 2007 to molesting boys while he was a priest and is the defendant in several ongoing lawsuits. The Archdiocese did report all of the allegations to authorities.

At a news conference announcing the release of the documents, Auxiliary Bishop Francis Kane repeated the Archdiocese’s mea culpa and said had they known then what they know now, they would have handled the allegations differently. Things like, you know, sending priests to therapy and relocating them.

“One of the things that we’ve learned is that we sent people off for evaluation and we got reports back saying. . .it’s safe to put them back in ministry with monitoring," Kane said. “We found out that isn’t true. That was a mistake. We didn’t realize the depth of this terrible, terrible sin and crime . . . child sex abuse.”

Jeff Anderson, the attorney representing the victims, said the archdiocese can’t simply say “we made a mistake.”

“We see this as a long-standing pattern of top officials of the archdiocese making conscious choices to protect their reputation and to protect the offenders,” he said. “That means conscious choices were made to imperil the children over the years.”

Anderson added the Archdiocese’s decision to release the records “is to the credit of the courageous survivors with whom we’ve been working.”