No Bail for Defrocked Priest after New Charges Filed

By Frank Holland
WGN
May 22, 2014

http://wgntv.com/2014/05/22/former-priest-in-police-custody-again-on-sexual-abuse-allegations/

[with video]

A defrocked priest who had been convicted of abusing several children at his West Side parish was ordered held without bail today on a new charge stemming from a 2005 incident.

Daniel McCormack said nothing as he clasped his hands behind his back. He wore a gray T-shirt tucked into long navy sweat shorts and black gym shoes.

McCormack, who pleaded guilty in 2007 to multiple counts of criminal sexual assault and was sentenced to five years in prison, was taken into custody Wednesday after a warrant for aggravated criminal sexual abuse was served, according to Chicago police.

The new allegation involves a 10-year-old boy at his former West Side parish. The warrant was issued by Cook County Criminal Court Judge Mary Margaret Brosnahan on May 16.

McCormack, 45, pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse to children under the age of 13, according to Illinois Department of Corrections. He was paroled in 2009 to the Illinois Department of Human Services’ treatment and detention facility in Rushville, according to Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman Tom Shaer.

Court records show the warrant was served at the Rushville facility. McCormak has been confined to the mental health facility while a petition to keep him committed indefinitely to state custody under the Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act is considered by a Cook County judge. His next hearing in that matter is June 12, before Cook County Judge Dennis Porter.

In February, three unidentified young men filed suits against the Catholic bishop of Chicago, the Archdiocese of Chicago and Cardinal Francis George after they claimed McCormack abused them.

The men claim the archdiocese and the others were negligent in allowing McCormack to work with young boys unsupervised when they knew or should have known that he had a history of sexually abusing minors.

All three plaintiffs were members of the basketball team at Our Lady of the Westside School and were abused by McCormack at different times spanning 2000 to 2005, according to a lawyer for the men. A $3.15 million settlement was announced in January involving a sex-abuse victim who said McCormack abused him in 2002 at the same school.