Background: Illinois is the latest state to detail decades of abuse.
Attorneys general and grand juries in several states are investigating sexual abuse in the church, including an investigation into the Archdiocese of Baltimore that was released last month. The massive investigations were inspired by a massive report in 2018 in six Pennsylvania dioceses, which shocked Catholics across the country.
The Illinois report was initiated by Lisa Madigan, the predecessor of Mr. Raoul as attorney general, who recognized early in his investigation a significant gap between the number of members of the clergy who were credibly accused and the smaller number disclosed by the church. “The number of allegations on top of what’s already in the public eye is staggering,” he told The New York Times in 2018.
Why It Matters: Questions about abuse by members of the clergy in Illinois have been going on for years.
The effects of the clerical sex abuse crisis have plagued the Catholic Church in the United States for decades, and exploded into the public eye 20 years ago when The Boston Globe documented an extensive cover-up. -abuse in church settings.
The Catholic Conference of Illinois estimates that Catholics make up about 27 percent of the state’s population, above the national average for states.
In the early 1990s, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago led a pioneering commission on sexual abuse in church settings, establishing a board made up mostly of lay people to evaluate those accusations of abuse against members of the clergy. The attorney general’s report called the Chicago archdiocese “a leader in the new era in handling abuse claims,” with a policy of removing credibly accused clergy members from in the ministry instead of transferring them to new positions. But the report also documents how the archdiocese sometimes failed to act on its own recommendations.
In advance of the release of the attorney general’s report, the state’s six Catholic dioceses released a statement last week on their approach to allegations of sexual abuse of minors. Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, said in a statement that the church in Illinois “has been a leader in dealing with sexual abuse of minors for many years.”
“This report clearly tells us that no one knows more about abuse, and no one has done less about it, than these dioceses themselves,” said Mike McDonnell , a spokesperson for SNAP, an advocacy group for victims of clerical sexual abuse.
What’s Next: Prosecutions appear unlikely in many of the cases described.
Most of the abuse documented in the report happened decades ago. The report acknowledges that criminal prosecutions and civil cases are impossible for many victims, due to statutes of limitations and the fact that most of the perpetrators are dead.
Some states, including California and New York, have implemented a “look-back window” that allows victims of child sexual abuse to bring civil claims that otherwise would not have been possible. barred by statutes of limitations, but Illinois is not among them.
The report is intended to provide “public accountability and a measure of healing to survivors who have long suffered in silence,” Mr. Raoul at a news conference Tuesday morning. He said the dioceses kept their promises to fully cooperate with the investigation.