Suit Accuses Former Priest, Ex-scout Leader of Molesting Boys

CBS Chicago
January 23, 2014

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/01/23/suit-accuses-former-priest-ex-scout-leader-of-molesting-boys/

Former Boy Scout leader Thomas Hacker (left) and former priest Norbert Maday (right) are accused of molesting boys at an Oak Lawn church in the 1970s. Both men have been convicted of other cases of sexual assault of children. (Credit: Illinois Department of Corrections/Wisconsin Department of Corrections)

It didn’t take long for the Chicago Archdiocese’s release of confidential files on pedophile priests to lead to a new lawsuit, this one accusing a former priest and a former boy scout leader of molesting boys at the same church in the 1970s.

WBBM Newsradio’s Regine Schlesinger reports, two days after thousands of pages of church documents were released, revealing decades of efforts to hide priest sex abuse cases, attorney Chris Hurley filed a lawsuit on behalf of three men, against former priest Norbert Maday.

Maday was convicted in 1994 of molesting two altar boys while on a church outing in Wisconsin. He has since been released from prison, but is a registered sex offender, living in Wisconsin, according to the National Sex Offender registry.

Hurley also represents two of those plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America, for alleged sex abuse at the hand of convicted former scout leader Thomas Hacker in the 1970s.

The new lawsuit alleges Maday inappropriately touched all three men while at St. Louis de Montfort Church in Oak Lawn, where Hacker was a volunteer, and accompanied Maday on parish retreats. Hacker has been convicted of multiple counts of sexual assault on boy scouts from troops that met at the church.

“What’s ironic here is Father Maday was responsible for supervising the scout master, and both he and the scout master were molesting children. Whether they were doing it in concert with one another, I’m not sure we’ll ever know,” he said. “They were friends at the time, and … Father Maday has visited Thomas Hacker in prison. Presumably, they remain friends.”

Hurley said, as Maday was the church liaison overseeing scout leaders at St. Louis de Montfort, the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago had a “fox guarding the hen house.”