Catholic church in Illinois vastly underreported clergy sex abuse, Kwame Raoul finds
At the start of a five-year investigation by the attorney general, Cardinal Blase Cupich told seminarians the Archdiocese of Chicago had “posted all of the names” of predatory clergy. As the investigation neared its end, Cupich kept adding names.
chicago.suntimes.com
“Before this investigation, the Catholic dioceses of Illinois publicly listed only 103 substantiated child sex abusers,” Raoul wrote in a 696-page report detailing the findings. “By comparison, this report reveals names and detailed information of 451 Catholic clerics and religious brothers who abused at least 1,997 children across all of the dioceses of Illinois.”
Asked whether church officials had lied in not making public that the extent of clergy sex abuse was more than what they reported, Raoul said at a news conference Tuesday, “I think the numbers sort of speak for themselves.”
“Decades of Catholic leadership decisions and policies have allowed known child sex abusers to hide, often in plain sight,” Raoul wrote. “And because the statute of limitations has frequently expired, many survivors of child sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clerics will never see justice in a legal sense.
wondering how many of those priests were drag queens and did drag queen Sunday school and drag queen story hour, drag queen brunch..........
