Letter to Peoria bishop: Where's your urgency re: protecting kids?
March 17, 2025
Dear Bishop Tylka:
Where is the urgency? A new lawsuit accuses a defrocked but still living predator priest with dozens of child sex crimes over six years. Yet you act like it is basically no big deal, and you take virtually no meaningful steps to protect kids who may live near him now.
In fact, your brief and tepid response to last week’s news is reckless, callous, and inexcusable.
In 2018, your predecessor put Fr. Thomas Miller on the publicly available diocesan ‘credibly accused’ abusers list. A previous Peoria bishop suspended him from active ministry and refused to put him back on the job for nearly two decades. Your superiors at the Vatican have permanently kicked him out of the priesthood. And two years ago, after a lengthy investigation, in a 696 page report, the Illinois Attorney General deemed the allegations against him ‘substantiated.’
Therefore, there is no doubt that Fr. Miller is guilty of assaulting at least one child, and very likely, others too. Any sensible person would assume that he is still a threat to kids.
One must ask, then: why are you pretending to be powerless about protecting youngsters from Fr. Miller? As strongly as we can, we beg you to take these immediate and effective common sense child-safety steps:
personally visiting every parish where Fr. Miller worked (even briefly) and emphatically begging victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers to call the police,
insisting that every priest in the diocese make a verbal pulpit announcement about Fr. Miller’s crimes, encouraging anyone who saw, suspected, or suffered his crimes to contact law enforcement,
challenging every church employee to also spread the word about Fr. Miller and aggressively warn parents and the public about him,
using the news media to alert police and the public about Fr. Miller’s current and last known whereabouts, and
sending Fr. Miller’s complete personnel file to every prosecutor and police chief in the towns where he was or is, and prodding them to keep their eyes on him and/or launch investigations into him.
Instead, over the past week, as best we can tell, you have done just one thing: Issue the same short, vague, boilerplate public relations pablum that you and your colleagues have used hundreds of times over the last two decades (“Our hearts go out to anyone who may have been hurt,” “We take all allegations of abuse seriously,” blah blah blah).
That is an inappropriate and inadequate response to what must be considered a valid and serious public safety threat.
We are not asking you to take some bold, innovative steps here. We are just asking you to follow the courageous example of Mike Eckert, one of Fr. Miller’s victims.
Mike did not merely bemoan Fr. Miller’s child sex crimes. He took action to expose them and to prevent more of them.
Mike did not just wring his hands. He filed a suit to expose both the crimes by Fr. Miller and the cover-ups by his church colleagues and supervisors.
Mike did not just “talk the talk,” he “walked the walk,” showing – through his legal action – that even deeply wounded child sex abuse survivors have the power to shine light on corruption and wrongdoing, and thereby helping deter corruption and wrongdoing.
Can’t you bring yourself to show compassion and bravery like this? Can’t you manage to be at least as responsible and caring as Mike is?
Two years ago, the Illinois Attorney General, in his report on clergy sex crimes and cover-ups across the state, wrote, “Only time will tell if Bishop Tylka will continue to push the Diocese of Peoria forward in handling cases of child sex abuse by Catholic clerics.”
Since then, however, there has been no real “progress” in terms of preventing clergy sex crimes in Peoria. There may be some tinkering. But you are not “pushing forward.” And you won’t be until you start doing all you can to keep your diocese’s predatory priests and ex-priests away from girls and boys to whom those clerics are attracted.
We look forward to hearing from you. Even more, we look forward to the day when, by your example, you show genuine concern for the well-being of innocent, vulnerable kids by exposing your underlings who commit or conceal heinous crimes against them.
David Clohessy of St. Louis
(314-566-9790, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)
Former national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
Current volunteer director of Missouri SNAP & Prevent Abuse LLC
P.S. While dreadfully disappointing, your refusal to protect kids from Fr. Miller is no surprise. Two years ago, our group publicly prodded you to put ten clerics on your public ‘credibly accused’ abuser’s list. Attorney General Kwame Raoul said you should add John M. Beatty, John Joseph Casey, Paul F. Dinan, John V. Farris, James Vincent Fitzgerald, Louis J. Meinhardt, Emil Twardochleb, and William J. Spine. We in SNAP told you that Fr. George J. Cody and Br. Christopher J. McCartney should also be included.
All ten of these men were or are in the Peoria diocese. Most of them are on official church ‘credibly accused’ abusers lists in other Catholic jurisdictions.
Yet you chose to quietly add only four of them: Casey, Dinan, Farris, and Spine, who – like Fr. Miller – is still alive and no doubt has access to children.
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2012/09_10/2012_08_21_Delgado_CookCounty.htm
And we believe that there are other proven, admitted, or credibly accused abusive priests, nuns, seminarians, brothers, bishops, or lay church employees in the Peoria area who – like Spine and Fr. Miller – essentially remain “under the radar” with no church supervision and who now live or work around unsuspecting families and vulnerable girls and boys.
https://www.snapnetwork.org/clergy_sex_abuse_victims_presser_friday_6_30_2_15_in_peoria
Yet you continue to do the absolute bare minimum, and even then, only in response to public pressure.
So again, Bishop, we beg you: Follow the stellar example set by Mike Eckert. Show some courage and compassion. Take tangible steps – not press releases, but real action – to safeguard our most precious commodity, our children.