Chicago archdiocese hid decades of abuse

After a 13-year-old boy reported in 1979 that a priest raped and 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 Reverend William Cloutier, who had already been accused of molesting other children, was returned to ministry a year later and went on to abuse again 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 that show how the archdiocese tried to contain a scandal over child sexual abuse.