Chicago Archdiocese Set to Release Records of Abuse Complaints

By Michael Paulson
New York Times
January 21, 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/us/chicago-archdiocese-records-of-abuse-complaints.html?_r=1

Thousands of documents detailing the Archdiocese of Chicago’s often halting response to sexual abuse allegations against 30 priests were posted online Tuesday after eight years of negotiations between victim advocates and Roman Catholic Church officials.

Most of the abuse was alleged to have taken place years ago, about half of the accused priests are dead and many of the victims have already been given financial settlements from the archdiocese. But the victims have pressed for publication of the files, arguing that the documents will provide an important form of reckoning, chronicling what church officials did, and did not do, when they learned of accusations that priests had molested minors.

“There can’t be safety in the future unless practices that were so dangerous in the past are fully known,” said Jeff Anderson, a lawyer representing many of the victims. “It really is a painful and sorrowful and frankly ugly portrait of what has been, but from that, there is hope that it will not be repeated, and to that end it brings comfort to survivors.”

The documents are certain to place an uncomfortable spotlight on Cardinal Francis E. George, the archbishop of Chicago, who is one of the leading intellectuals in the American church hierarchy and who was president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2007 to 2010, when many dioceses were grappling with the abuse crisis. Although the abuse took place before Cardinal George became archbishop, many of the victims first came forward after his arrival; some of the files concern cases in which Cardinal George’s response has been questioned, including that of the Rev. Joseph R. Bennett, whose disciplinary proceeding the cardinal briefly delayed, and the Rev. Norbert J. Maday, whose prison sentence the cardinal sought to reduce.

“It would be a great fulfillment of the millennium spirit to see your captive heart set free,” Cardinal George wrote to the incarcerated Father Maday in 2000. But the cardinal later changed his mind. In 2007, after several more people had come forward to say they had been abused by Father Maday, the cardinal wrote to a parole commission, saying he was seeking to defrock the priest.

The documents also show Cardinal George repeatedly offering to meet with victims of abuse and apologizing; in 2005 he wrote to a victim, “We have tried to apologize to all those who are suffering because of the failure on the part of some bishops to supervise priests adequately.”

This month, in a letter distributed to parishes, Cardinal George acknowledged that in the 1980s, the archdiocese responded to allegations of sexual abuse “sometimes hesitantly,” and that in the 1990s, “archdiocesan policy still allowed some perpetrators a restricted form of ministry, with monitoring, that kept them from regular contact with minors.” He said the response changed in 2002, when the American bishops agreed to a zero-tolerance policy that bars any priest facing a credible accusation of abuse from serving in ministry.

“Publishing for all to read the actual records of these crimes raises transparency to a new level,” Cardinal George wrote in the letter. “It will be helpful, we pray, for some, but painful for many.”

The archdiocese turned the estimated 6,000 pages of documents over to lawyers for abuse victims last Wednesday; the lawyers delayed the release for further redactions to protect victims’ privacy. An archdiocesan lawyer told reporters last week that 95 percent of the allegations in the files concerned conduct before 1988, and none after 1996; 14 of the 30 accused priests are dead, and none is still serving in ministry. Cardinal George, who has been the archbishop of Chicago since 1997, has said he never met many of the accused priests.

The documents will also shed new light on the handling of abusers by Cardinal George’s predecessor, Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin, a highly regarded figure in American Catholic history, and one of the first prominent church figures to act strongly against clergy sexual abuse. Cardinal Bernardin occasionally gave abusive priests second chances — for example, he allowed the Rev. Joseph L. Fitzharris a new parish assignment, with the caveat that the priest should not be allowed unsupervised contact with high school-age boys, after Father Fitzharris had been charged in court with sexually abusing a 15-year-old.

The Archdiocese of Chicago, which is the third largest diocese in the country, has paid about $100 million to settle abuse allegations against priests. The archdiocese has also posted to its website a list of 65 priests — none still serving in ministry — who the church said have been credibly accused of abusing minors; the documents to be released Tuesday concern 30 priests whose files were subject to negotiations with victims’ lawyers.

The personnel files of accused priests have previously been made public in other American dioceses, including Boston and Los Angeles, generally as a result of litigation. Most of the documents have been published in an online archive, bishop-accountability.org.

The release of the Chicago files comes as Cardinal George, a 77-year-old cancer survivor, is awaiting permission from the Vatican to retire. Pope Francis’s choice of a new archbishop of Chicago will be closely watched as it will probably be the pope’s first appointment to lead a major American see.