CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times
BY ART GOLAB Staff Reporter January 7, 2014
Details of sexual abuse by priests, along with information about church officials who may have covered up the abuse, will be turned over next week to attorneys suing the Archdiocese of Chicago and will be made public shortly afterward.
Cardinal Francis George announced the move in a letter to priests that will be printed in church bulletins this Sunday.
The church files, sought for nearly seven years by plaintiffs’ attorneys, will be handed over Jan. 15 under terms of a court settlement. But they will not become public for at least another week in order to remove victims’ information, according to Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul, Minn., attorney involved in the suit.
Anderson, who has reviewed the documents, said they contain “not just the histories of the offenders but those who made the choice to protect them . . . top officials current and past.” The files contain information on cases involving 30 priests, most of them already named on an archdiocese website listing priests with substantiated allegations against them.
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