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Abuse Victim to Get $1.4M By Maurice Possley Chicago Sun-Times December 19, 2008 http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1339284,CST-NWS-abuse19.article The Archdiocese of Chicago has agreed to pay $1.375 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that a priest sexually abused a teenage boy at Five Holy Martyrs Church from 1987 through 1992. Attorney Jeff Anderson, who represented the victim, said Thursday that the Rev. Chester Przybylo repeatedly abused the Polish immigrant at the church at 4327 S. Richmond. The lawsuit alleged the victim was molested at the parish rectory and other locations. Anderson said the victim reported the abuse to Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Alfred Abramowicz, but the bishop accused the boy of lying and told him to go to confession. Abramowicz died in 1999. According to Chicago Archdiocese documents in the lawsuit, "Przybylo was known as 'Chester the Molester' by the police officers in the neighborhood" of the church. The victim said that Przybylo took him under his wing when he was a 13-year-old altar boy in 1986 and that the sexual abuse began about a year later in the locker room of a health club in Chicago and continued for four years. The victim, who is now in his 30s, married with a family and living in Illinois, is a native of Poland, as is Przybylo, who was ordained by the Diocese of Tarno, Poland, in 1976. Przybylo served as a priest at three parishes in Chicago -- St. Turibius, Five Holy Martyrs and Holy Innocence -- before he left the Chicago archdiocese in 1993. In a written statement, the archdiocese said, "Przybylo was never a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, although he ministered in various Archdiocesan parishes for a period of time from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. He now is associated with an institution that has no relationship to the Archdiocese of Chicago or the Roman Catholic Church." Przybylo, listed as being at the Christ the King Shrine church in Winfield, could not be reached for comment. Contact: mauricepossley@gmail.com |
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