Ex-priest Mccormack Faces New Sex Abuse Charge in ’05 Case Involving Boy

By Mitch Dudek
Chicago Sun-Times
May 21, 2014

http://www.suntimes.com/news/crime/27594502-418/defrocked-priest-mccormack-back-in-chicago-police-custody.html#.U38FSvl_uSp

Daniel McCormack | Chicago Police photo

Convicted child molester and defrocked Catholic priest Daniel McCormack was charged Wednesday with aggravated criminal sexual abuse in a 2005 incident involving a minor boy, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.

McCormack is expected to appear in bond court on the latest charges on Thursday.

He remains in custody pending a hearing on whether he is declared a sexual deviant person, according to Sally Daly, a spokeswoman with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.

Chicago Police officers arrested McCormack at a Department of Human Services treatment facility in Rushville, Ill. — about 230 miles southwest of Chicago.

McCormack had been serving his sentence at the Western Illinois Correctional Center in Mount Sterling, Ill., until he was paroled to the Rushville facility in 2009, according to Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman Tom Shaer.

According to a source, there is an ongoing effort to have McCormack committed indefinitely to state custody under the Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act. The next hearing on the procedure is June 12.

McCormack was originally arrested for sex crimes in January 2006. He was removed from the priesthood in November 2007 and pleaded guilty that year to abusing five children while he was a parish priest at St. Agatha on Chicago’s West Side. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

Susan Burritt, a Chicago Archdiocese spokeswoman, said she was unaware of McCormack’s most recent arrest.

“Daniel J. McCormack is no longer a priest. He was laicized in November 2007,” Burritt said in an email, using the formal term for the removal of clerical status.

Barbara Blaine, founder and president of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, issued the following statement Wednesday evening: “We are grateful for the victim and police who are working to get Fr. Daniel McCormack locked up again. He’s one of Illinois’ most egregious predator priests.”

Contributing: Rummana Hussain

Email: mdudek@suntimes.com