CHICAGO (IL)
Renew America
Matt C. Abbott
December 10, 2004
The following information comes from journalist Lee Podles, whose book, 'A Harsh Light: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church,' is due out relatively soon.
Disturbing material, to say the least.
"Davenport-Chicago link"
"In 1948 a group of pedophile priests graduated from Kenrick Seminary in St. Louis: James Janssen, Francis Bass, and Theodore Anthony Geerts. They began a 50 year reign of abuse in Davenport with the knowledge of the three bishops of Davenport.
"They had strong connections to the Chicago area. When Bishop Hayes discovered James Janssen was an abuser, he sent Janssen to Chicago to live at St. Isaac Jogues parish in Hinsdale, to study at Loyola University, and to be treated by Father William Devlin, S. J., M. D., and J. V. P. Stewart. No one told the pastor of St. Isaac Jogues that Janssen was an abuser. Janssen worked with the Boy Scouts and families of the parish, and started abusing a twelve-year-old scout while convincing the therapists that he was cured.
"In the mid and late 1950s Janssen and Bass took Davenport boys to the Cook County Hospital Morgue, where the abusers had a contact. Janssen took his nephew James Wells (whom he had molested since he was five) to the morgue. One boy whom Bass took remembered: 'Each corpse seemed more horrible than the last. Some were decomposed. Others were frozen in bizarre and terrifying postures with their eyes and mouths wide open. Our guide stopped us often and provided details. He showed me some babies.' Bass took the boys to his uncle's house in the suburbs and molested them. Janssen told his victims that he knew men in Chicago who would pay to have sex with them: 'He also told me that I could make money letting older men perform oral sex on me and that he would show me how to make those connections in Chicago.'