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.

For decades, those at the highest levels of the third-largest archdiocese in the US moved accused priests from parish to parish while hiding the clerics’ histories from the public.

The files, released through settlements between attorneys for the archdiocese and victims, describe how the late cardinals John Cody and Joseph Bernardin often approved the reassignments.

The archdiocese removed some priests from ministry, but often years or decades after the clergy were known to have molested children.

The documents, posted online last night, cover only 30 of the at least 65 clergy for whom the archdiocese says it has substantiated claims of child abuse.

Vatican documents related to the 30 cases were not included, under the negotiated terms of the disclosure.

The records also did not include the files of former priest Daniel McCormack, who pleaded guilty in 2007 to abusing five children and whose case prompted an apology from Chicago archbishop Cardinal Francis George and an internal investigation of how the archdiocese responds to abuse claims.

But the more than 6,000 pages include internal communications between church officials, disturbing testimony about specific abuses, meeting schedules where allegations were discussed, and letters from anguished parishioners. The names of victims, and details considered private under mental health laws were redacted.

Cardinal George said in a letter distributed to parishes last week that the archdiocese agreed to turn over the records in an attempt to help the victims heal.

“I apologise to all those who have been harmed by these crimes and this scandal,” he wrote.

Officials in the archdiocese said most of the abuse detailed in the files occurred before 1988, none after 1996, and that all of these cases ultimately were reported to authorities.

But victims’ lawyers argue many of the allegations surfaced after George assumed control of the archdiocese in 1997, and some of the documents relate to how the church handled the cases more recently.

“The issue is not when the abuse happened; the issue is what they did once it was reported,” said Chicago attorney Marc Pearlman, who has represented about 200 victims of clergy abuse in the Chicago area.

When a young woman reported in 1970 that she’d been abused as a teenager, for example, Cody assured the priest that the “whole matter has been forgotten” because “no good can come of trying to prove or disprove the allegations”.

In one 1989 letter to Bernardin, Reverend Raymond Goedert, the vicar for priests, worries about parishioners discovering the record of Reverend Vincent E McCaffrey, who was moved four times because of abuse allegations.

“Unfortunately, one of the key parishioners... received an anonymous phone call which made reference by name to Vince and alleged misconduct on his part with young boys,” he wrote. “We all agreed that the best thing would be for Vince to move. We don’t know if the anonymous caller will strike again.”

When the archdiocese tried to force accused clergy into treatment or isolate them at church retreats, some of the priests refused, or ignored orders by church administrators to stay away from children.

Church officials worried about losing parishioners and “potential priests” over abuse scandals.

“This question I believe is going to get stickier and stickier,” Patrick O’Malley, then-vicar for priests, wrote in a 1992 letter.

Then, in 2002, a national scandal about the failure of dioceses to stop abusers consumed the church. US bishops adopted a toughened disciplinary policy and pledged to remove all guilty priests from church jobs in their dioceses.

But for many victims, it was too little and too late.

“Where was the church for the victims of this sick, demented, twisted paedophile?” one man wrote in a 2002 letter to George about abuse at the hands of Reverend Norbert Maday, who was imprisoned in Wisconsin after a 1994 conviction for molesting two boys.

“Why wasn’t the church looking out for us? We were children, for God’s sake.”