Statement on IL AG Catholic abuse & cover up report
May 23, 2023
David Clohessy, former national director of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)
314-566-9790
davidgclohessy@gmail.com
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It's tragic that once again, hundreds of church officials concealed thousands of child sex crimes yet none of these 'enablers' face any consequences. Illinois lawmakers must pass new laws that help law enforcement pursue those who hid or help child molesters.
Virtually all of the AG's recommendations are simple common sense steps that any official who genuinely cares about kids would have adopted long ago.
Here is what the Illinois attorney general will NOT announce today: criminal charges against a Catholic official who hid a predator priest. Not one charge against even one church leader, high or low.
That’s tragic. And that’s because Illinois has old, weak laws that make it tough for law enforcement to pursue employers who ignore or conceal known or suspected child sex crimes.
That must change.
This injustice is also because for decades, hundreds of Illinois bishops, clerics and other church staff have successfully ‘run out the clock’ on widespread corruption and deceit by stonewalling police, stiff-arming prosecutors, deceiving parishioners and using shrewd legal and public relations maneuvers to protect child molesting clerics and their own reputations and careers instead of protecting innocent children and vulnerable adults.
That, sadly, is unlikely to change much (despite repeated promises by the Catholic hierarchy).
And this is why legislative reform is so crucial.
No institution is capable of policing itself, especially not a huge, powerful, insular, secretive, male dominated one with a long, sordid and well-documented history of putting its own interests ahead of those it supposedly serves.
Again, it's tragic that hundreds of Illinois church officials concealed thousands of child sex crimes yet none of these 'enablers' face any consequences. Illinois lawmakers must pass new laws that help law enforcement pursue those who hid or help child molesters.
Virtually all of the AG's recommendations are simple common sense steps that any official who genuinely cares about kids would have adopted long ago.
Even before the results of the Illinois Attorney general were released, Catholic officials across the state doubled-down on their oft-repeated but deceitful and self-serving claim that they’d ‘reformed.’
In the days ahead, they will work hard to convince anyone who may have information or suspicions about clergy sex crimes and cover ups in Illinois to call a church figure. That’s wrong and risky.
If kids are to be protected, if victims are to be made healthier and if the church is to be made safer - it’s crucial that victims, witnesses and whistleblowers find the courage to speak up and get help from independent sources, like therapists, social workers, support groups and plaintiffs’ attorneys, rather than perhaps well-meaning but almost always ill-trained church officials with primary loyalty to an institution, not to individuals.
Sadly, Kwame Raoul’s investigation is about 30 years too late. It should have begun back in 1993, when the Belleville diocese lost nearly ten percent of its clerics in just over a year due to abuse reports.
It should have been done that same year when the Chicago Archdiocese was exposed for using hardball legal tactics to intimidate and discredit wounded clergy sex abuse victims in a page one Wall Street Journal investigation.
So we must remember that for decades, law enforcement in Illinois and elsewhere have largely ignored clergy sex crimes and cover ups. Today’s disclosures will rightly be seen by many abuse survivors and their loved ones as ‘too little, too late.’
Whatever is or is not in today’s report, it bears repeating that five years ago, Raoul’s predecessor Kathleen Madigan disclosed that she
"identified child sexual abuse accusations against at least 500 Catholic priests or clergy members not publicly named by the church,” and
"that many of those cases were not properly investigated.”
Let that sink in. Since 2002, all US bishops pledged to be ‘open and transparent’ about abuse. And since the 1990s, Chicago church officials claimed they were a national ‘leader’ in abuse prevention.
But nearly 15 years later, six Illinois bishops were hiding ‘at least 500’ names of accused child molesting clerics, according to the state’s highest law enforcement official.
Even now, we strongly doubt that all – or even most – of those priests, nuns, brothers, monks and seminarians have been disclosed.
That means that children across Illinois are still at risk of abuse by current and former Catholic clerics.
The solution, in the short term, is clear: every single current or former Catholic staffer or parishioner must summon the strength to share what they know or suspect about abuse and cover ups, no matter how long ago or how seemingly insignificant, with the independent professionals in law enforcement, support groups, and other unbiased sources.Raoul repeatedly characterizes wrongdoing by bishops as 'failures' when in fact they are often deliberate refusals to do what's right.
To his credit, Raoul exposes some current and recent deceptions by Catholic officials. These revelations should remind all victims, witnesses and whistleblowers that the best, safest course of action is to report known or suspected child sex crimes or cover ups to independent sources of help, like police, prosecutors, therapists and support groups, not to church officials who all-too-often still protect their comfort, careers and reputations instead of protecting their flocks.