Defrocked Priest Held without Bail

CSNChicago
May 22, 2014

http://www.csnchicago.com/article/defrocked-priest-held-without-bail

A defrocked Catholic priest and convicted child molester was held without bail Thursday after being arrested in Chicago a day earlier for a sex crime that authorities say occurred in 2005.

Officials said in court Thursday a 10-year-old victim was attending an after school program at St. Agatha's church, where McCormack was a priest.

Prosecutors allege that McCormack took the boy to a White Sox game, and after the game hugged the boy and reached into his pants and fondled him, ordering him not to tell anyone.

A second incident allegedly happened a few months later when McCormack brought the boy to the rectory and sexually abused him in his bedroom while they watched TV.

Police said they were notified of the alleged abuse in November of 2013 after the victim told someone about what happened.

Daniel McCormack was taken into custody Tuesday by Chicago police officers at a Department of Human Services treatment facility in Rushville, about 230 miles southwest of Chicago.

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

McCormack in 2007 pleaded guilty to five felony counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, and was sentenced to a 5-year prison term. The sexual abuse, which leads back to his 2001 days as a teacher and basketball coach at Our Lady of the Westside School, (now St. Agatha Academy) targeted boys between the ages of 8 and 12.

Charges were never filed against McCormack until 2006 when he was finally removed as pastor.

Barbara Blaine of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said in a statement that McCormack is one of Illinois' "most egregious predator priests," and she thanked those working to get him locked up again.

In March, the Archdiocese of Chicago agreed to settle for $1.68 to $2.1 million a lawsuit alleging former priest Daniel McCormack sexually abused a Catholic school student.

Efforts are ongoing to have McCormack committed under Illinois' Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act. The next hearing on that procedure is June 12.

NBC Chicago has learned Cardinal Francis George will be deposed on the McCormack case within the next two weeks.