Protesters hold up photos of survivors of clergyman abuse in Illinois in 2011. Scott Olson (Getty Images)
About 2,000 Illinois children were sexually abused by Catholic priests between 1950 and 2010, according to a report by the Attorney General’s Office released Tuesday, in the decades perpetrated in the Boston Diocese, whose exposure was instrumental in uncovering this scourge in the United States.
The 696-page report, released by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, confirms abuse allegations made against 451 Catholic priests in the state’s six dioceses. Over the past seven decades, there have been at least 1,997 victims, twice the number in Pennsylvania over the same period, another major American Church blacklisted case. The text publishes for the first time the names of 149 priests and religious against whom the investigation has found credible complaints. As Raoul points out in the report’s preface, the 2018 investigation was launched by his predecessor, Lisa Madigan, who accused the church of underreporting cases and initially identified 103 perpetrators within its ranks. Of the 451 named in the report, 330 died.
The Illinois revelation adds to a long list of investigations around the world, particularly in Latin America, into sexual abuse in institutions dependent on the Catholic Church, such as schools, boarding schools or parishes, and into the systematic practice of covering up offenders to transport them to other destinations and so spread the danger. The Oscar-winning film Spotlight, about the Boston Globe investigation that uncovered the abuses in this Massachusetts diocese, tells a good tale of the cloak of silence and then the sudden removal of the troublesome priests. “Decades of decisions and policies of the Catholic hierarchy have allowed known child molesters to go into hiding, often in full public view,” Raoul said.
Abuse scandals have damaged the church’s reputation and posed a major challenge to Pope Francis, who has enacted a series of measures to hold the Curia to account over the past decade, with mixed results due to internal opposition. The US church had to pay millions of dollars to avoid lawsuits, so between 2004 and 2009 seven dioceses filed for bankruptcy to avoid paying. Just last year, a New Jersey diocese agreed to pay $87.5 million to 300 victims, and a month later the Archdiocese of Santa Fe pledged $121 million for the cause. By 2007, the Church in the US had paid out more than $1.4 billion in compensation.
In Illinois, investigators have combed through thousands of files, spent hours interviewing church officials and reviewed more than 600 victim complaints. Given that the crimes committed decades ago in some cases have already been pronounced, many have no recourse to justice. However, the report seeks partial reparation for the victims, whom it does not refer to as such, but as “survivors”.
“These perpetrators may never be brought to justice, but their naming is intended to bring public accountability and some measure of healing to survivors who have long suffered in silence,” the attorney general said in the statement. “Almost all individuals interviewed by the Attorney General report an episode of mental disorder as a result of the abuse,” the text reads.
Documented cases presented by parishes that give the number of victims—mainly children, but also some girls and young women—include Father Francis Skube, who came to the Diocese of Belleville in the late 1950s or early 1960s Sexual interest in children was never a secret, as a village priest’s letter to the diocese in March 1959 warned: “Skube will do great spiritual harm if he poses as religious.” The warning did not prevent Skube from molesting three minors.
About Father Robert Mayer, the report said the Archdiocese of Chicago had received complaints for years despite “refusing to remove him from office.” Another priest, Thomas Francis Kelly, molested more than 15 boys between the ages of 11 and 17 in various parishes in the 1960s and 1970s.
According to the local bishops’ conference, about 3.5 million Catholics lived in Illinois in 2019, accounting for 27% of the state’s population. Illinois’ six dioceses had about 950 parishes and more than 2,200 priests.