More Accusations Of Child Sex Abuse By Priests In Illinois Uncovered In Report
Accusations of child sex abuse against at least 500 Roman Catholic priests and clergy members in Illinois have never been made public, a preliminary investigation by the state's attorney general has found.
That brings the total number of members in the Illinois dioceses who have been accused of sexually abusing minors to about 690, according to the report released Wednesday. The church previously had made public the names of only 185 accused priests, 45 of whom were added after Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office started investigating in August.
Madigan started her investigation into the Catholic Church after a sweeping grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania uncovered more than 300 "predator priests" statewide who committed "criminal and/or morally reprehensible conduct."
The report out of Pennsylvania was scathing:
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro called it a "systematic cover-up" and a "failure of law enforcement," NPR previously reported. Additionally, the grand jury investigation named the accused priests, something the Illinois attorney general's report did not.
Madigan wanted to see if the same thing was happening in her state. Her office said in a statement that it reviewed thousands of pages of documents voluntarily turned over by each of Illinois' six dioceses and set up a hotline where people could report allegations of sexual abuse by priests.
As Susie An reported for NPR's Morning Edition, Madigan said "one of the things we've seen is that the church really took any opportunity it thought it could not to investigate."
Madigan's office found dozens of examples where the Illinois dioceses "failed to adequately investigate an allegation of clergy sexual abuse it received from a survivor," according to the report.
The investigation revealed that, of the allegations the Illinois dioceses have received, they only "deemed twenty-six percent as 'credible' allegations, meaning seventy-four percent of the allegations were either not investigated, or were investigated but not substantiated."
The reasons the dioceses didn't investigate accusations varied, according to the report. Sometimes the accuser wished to remain anonymous, or the accused priest had left the country, but the most common reason was that the accused had either died or resigned.
The dioceses often discounted allegations that came from just one accuser and "sought to discredit a survivor's allegations based upon the survivor's personal life," according to the investigation.
The archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, responded to Madigan's initial findings in a statement:
Cupich said it was "difficult to discern" which of the report's findings apply to the Archdiocese of Chicago but defended its efforts to mitigate sexual abuse, claiming to have been at the "forefront of dealing with the issue of clergy sexual abuse for nearly three decades."
He also said in the statement that all reports of sexual abuse are investigated, whether the accused priest is alive or dead, and that, starting in 2002, they have reported all allegations of child sexual abuse to civil authorities, including "historical allegations."
The Diocese of Joliet also responded to the attorney general's report, saying in a statement that the investigation doesn't distinguish between dioceses and that they have received "no formal or informal indication from the Attorney General that we failed to adequately investigate any allegation of abuse and/or report it to authorities."
The attorney general said in a statement that the investigation isn't finished and that her office has asked the state's dioceses for additional information.
But some sexual abuse survivors don't think the preliminary investigation goes far enough, according to An, who was reporting for NPR.
"I don't know what to believe out of the Catholic Church. I really don't, because everything's been so secretive and hidden," Larry Antonsen, a leader with the Chicago branch of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told NPR.
Decades ago, Antonsen reported a priest who had sexually abused him as a child, but he says he's still waiting for the church to publicly list the man's name. He said he hopes Illinois will launch its own grand jury investigation.
HOUSE OF PEDOPHILES:
2,000 years of Catholic oppression and hypocrisy!
Should the
Catholic Church be banned???
Vatican ‘No Comment’ About Hundreds of Predator Priests Abusing 1,000
Children
Report: Dutch Catholic Church Accused of Covering up Child Sex Abuse
More than half of the senior figures in the Dutch Catholic Church have been accused of covering up or engaging in the sexual abuse of children, according to a report by the Netherlands’ leading newspaper.
Out of the 39 cardinals, bishops, and auxiliary bishops, four have been accused of abusing children whilst another 16 have been accused of transferring known paedophile priests to other parishes where they may have gone on to abuse more children, reports the Dutch newspaper of record NRC Handelsblad.
The abuse is said to span from 1945 to 2010, including “well-known and lesser-known cases that have surfaced since 2010, the beginning of the abuse scandal in the Netherlands” and is sourced from original reporting, the Deetman Commission that investigated the sexual abuse of minors in the Roman Catholic Church in 2010-2011, and anonymous information obtained from a victims’ support unit at the Church.
NRC profiles the clerics who abused the choir girls, altar boys, other minors, and seminarians, notably:
- Jan Niënhaus, who died in 2000, and had abused eight boys before becoming Auxiliary Bishop of Utrecht; the Roman Catholic Church had found the complaints against him well founded.
- Jo Gijsen, Bishop of Roermond, who died in 2013, had complaints against him for raping two boys upheld by the Church. Gijsen also facilitated the moving of other paedophile priests from one parish to another.
- Philippe Bär, Bishop of Rotterdam (1982-1993), was accused of sharing a bed with male students training as priests and had allegedly taken no action against at leave five priests who had abused children.
- And Jan ter Schure, former Bishop of Den Bosch who died in 2003, is said to have abused a pupil at a boys’ boarding school in Ugchelen. The congregation of Salesians, to which he belonged, paid the victim 16,000 euros in 2003.
According to The Guardian, the Dutch Catholic Church said it could “confirm a part” of the report.
“The names of several bishops correspond to those named in a report commissioned by the church in 2010,” Church spokeswoman Daphne van Roosendaal said.
Most of those implicated had died, van Roosendaal added, with those others still alive withholding comment, according to NRC.
Protester Yells ‘Shame on You’ as Cardinal Wuerl Calls for Loyalty to Pope Francistrib.al/zXoYUfl
With relation to the other 16 senior clerics who allegedly facilitated the movement of paedophile priests to new parishes rather than defrocking them or alerting police, the newspaper gave the example of three girls, aged between six and seven, who were sexually abused by a chaplain in Maastricht.
After the abuse was exposed in 1969, the chaplain attempted to kill himself by driving his car into a tree. After surviving the suicide attempt and rather than dismissing him, Monsignor Petrus Moors moved him on to Thorn.
The newspaper goes on to describe that Moors’ successor Jo Gijsen facilitated further transfers throughout the province of Limburg, with the priest continuing to abuse children for another two decades.
In the 1990s, he was caught again in North Limburg Ospel, where he is said to have regularly raped one victim. He was successful in his second attempt at suicide.
“Transfer and look away. That was the regular recipe of cardinals and bishops in cases of sexual abuse,” the newspaper writes, comparing the emerging scandal to another in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., where a report by the Pennsylvania grand jury on clerical sex abuse found that over 70 years, around 1,000 minors were abused by some 300 priests, deacons, and seminarians.
“People talk about America, but the same thing happened to me around the corner,” says Brigitte Kicken, one of the first victims of the Maastricht chaplain.
“In Maastricht alone, at least five children,” the abuse survivor added.
According to the Diocese of Roermond, nine men and women were abused by the Maastricht priest. Attorney Noor Geraads said that, in fact, 12 people have filed a complaint against him, with both Geraads and Ms Kicken believing there may be many more victims by that perpetrator alone.
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