Ex-Priest Daniel McCormack Ruled Sexually Violent, Remains Detained

By Stephen Gossett in News on Sep 8, 2017 11:00PM

Getty Images / Photo: Scott Olsen / Protesters demonstrated in 2006 in the wake of the McCormack scandal.

Daniel McCormack, a former Chicago priest and convicted child molester, will stay in custody at a state institution after a judge ruled on Friday that he is a sexually violent person who still poses a risk to abuse children, according to reports. At the same time, the judge stopped short of determining whether or not McCormack will be "indefinitely" committed.

McCormick pleaded guilty in 2007 to sexually abusing five boys while he was a priest and teacher at St. Agatha Parish, on the West Side. (He is alleged to have abused more than two dozen boys.) He was sentenced to five years in prison.

But McCormack has since remained in state custody after his release date, in a Rushville facility, after the state of Illinois filed a petition in 2009—when he first became eligible for parole—to have the ex-priest deemed sexually violent, and thereby be detained further.

“I have no reasonable doubt that you will engage in future acts of sexual violence,” the Judge Dennis Porter told McCormack at the ruling on Friday, according to the Sun-Times.

"They know how dangerous he is, they know how cunning he is, how manipulative he is," said Marc Pearlman, an attorney represents multiple McCormack victims, according to ABC7.

At the bench trial, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angeline Stanislaus reportedly testified for the state that McCormack has a pedophiliac disorder and posed a high risk to commit further offenses.

The Chicago Archdiocese has paid out at least $7.5 million in lawsuit settlements to men who have alleged that McCormack abused them, according to the Tribune.