ROCKFORD (IL)
Rockford Register Star
May 23, 2023
By Andy Carrigan
Sex abuse survivor: Diocese, Paprocki ‘prioritized their own interests’
A multi-year investigation into child sex abuse by members of the Catholic clergy in Illinois found almost 2,000 children across the state were sexually abused.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul Tuesday released a comprehensive report detailing decades of child sex abuse by members of the Illinois Catholic dioceses Belleville, Chicago, Joliet, Peoria, Rockford, and Springfield.
The exhaustive 700-page report features detailed narrative accounts of child sex abuse committed by Catholic clerics.
Many of the narratives were written in consultation with survivors, are based upon their experiences, and told from the survivor’s point of view.
“I was raised and confirmed in the Catholic church and sent my children to Catholic schools. I believe the church does important work to support vulnerable populations; however, as with any presumably reputable institution, the Catholic church must be held accountable when it betrays the public’s trust,” Raoul said.
Although the report formally concludes the investigation the Attorney General’s office opened in 2018, it contains 50 pages of the office’s recommendations to the dioceses for the handling of future child sex abuse allegations.
Before Raoul’s investigation, the Catholic dioceses of Illinois publicly listed only 103 substantiated child sex abusers. By comparison, Raoul’s report reveals names and detailed information of 451 Catholic clerics and religious brothers who abused at least 1,997 children across all of the dioceses in Illinois.
Of the 451 clerics in the report, 330 have died, according to Raoul.
The Archdiocese of Chicago, and the dioceses of Belleville, Joliet, Peoria, Rockford and Springfield issued a joint statement regarding the findings.
“The Catholic Church in Illinois has been at the forefront of dealing with sexual abuse of minors for many years,” said Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago and Metropolitan of the Chicago Province.
“At this time, working with the Office of the Attorney General of Illinois, the leaders of all six Illinois dioceses endeavored to make clear and update our approach, mindful of our lived experience and best practices in this field. Our common goals in doing so are to ensure we offer pastoral support to those affected by this tragedy and to work diligently to prevent it from occurring again.”
The Illinois dioceses’ said for years their procedures include, among other things:
- The diocesan website publication of the names of its clerics credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors.
- Policies for handling allegations of sexual abuse of minors against clerics incardinated in their dioceses.
- Diocesan policies for handling such allegations against deceased, laicized and religious order priests.
- Processes for dealing with allegations that arise during criminal investigations or civil lawsuits.
The Illinois Catholic dioceses serve 3.4 million Catholics, comprising approximately 27% of the total state population, through more than 900 parishes.
‘Failed leadership’
In its review of the Springfield diocese, serving 123,706 Catholics over 28 counties, the AG office found 34 abusive clerics and religious brothers.
A series of bishops – William A. O’Connor, Joseph A. McNicholas and Daniel L. Ryan – who served from 1949 through 1999 contributed to a “story of failed leadership,” the report found, allowing priests suspected of sexually abusing children to continue serving in the parish.
Ryan himself engaged in sexual misconduct of which the report finds there are five survivors.
In 2006, a “Special Panel on Clergy Misconduct” stated that Ryan fostered “a culture of secrecy” in the diocese that discouraged priests from coming forward with information about sexual misconduct by other priests in the diocese.
Ryan, confirmed as a substantiated child sex abuser in the Joliet diocese as well, died in 2015.
“Through it all, men leading the Diocese of Springfield for 50 years chose to protect the reputation of the church and its clerics, rather than attempt to ensure the physical and mental well-being of its children,” the report states. “Warning bells sounded, and time and time again these men ignored the alarms. As a result, children of the diocese suffered through decades of child sex abuse, the impact of which continues to this day.”
In addition to the 23 known names released in a 2019 report from Minnesota-based law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates, more names from the diocese went public through the AG report:
- John M. Beatty, ordained 1950, died 1997. Area assignment: Cathedral Boys’ High School from 1951 to 1954.
- John “Jack” Campbell, ordained 1950, died 2009. Area assignment: Saint Joseph Hall, Jesuit Tertianship House in Decatur.
- Victor Lucien Chateauvert, ordained 1973, died 1999. No local assignments.
- Kevin J. Downey, ordained 1982, removed from ministry 2016. No local assignments.
- Joseph C. Gill, ordained 1959, died 2012. Area assignment: Saint Joseph Hall, Jesuit Tertianship House in Decatur.
- J. Gerard Griffin, ordained 1938, died 1986. Area assignments: Sacred Heart, Springfield, 1974; Saint Aloysius, Litchfield, 1978-1986.
- Thomas McShane, ordained 1960, died 2018. Area assignment: Saint Joseph Hall, Jesuit Tertianship House in Decatur.
- Thomas Gregory Meyer, ordained 1970, died 2012. No area assignments.
- Orville Lawrence Munie, ordained 1937, died 1993. Area assignments: Saint Isidore, Bethany, 1981-1983; Sacred Heart, Dalton City, 1981-1983.
- Francis Nawn: ordained 1951, died 1992. Area assignment: Saint Joseph Hall, Jesuit Tertianship House in Decatur.
- James Patrick O’Hara, ordained 1945, died 1987. Area assignments: Blessed Sacrament, Springfield, 1945-1948; Saint Thomas the Apostle, Decatur, 1948-1952; Our Lady of Lourdes, Decatur; 1969-1977.
- Louis C. Shea, ordained 1955, died 1996. Area assignments: Saint James, Decatur, 1955-1959; Saint Mary, Taylorville, 1959-1963; Saint John’s Hospital, Springfield, 1969-1971.
Another person with ties to Springfield, Francis Anthony Skube, who founded the Franciscan Brothers of Christ the King, had been “credibly accused” by two dioceses, Belleville and Davenport.
As early as March 1959, a letter to an official in the Springfield diocese from a Provo, Utah, pastor warned “Skube will cause a great deal of spiritual damage while masquerading as religious.” The pastor said he “expelled” Skube from his church 16 months earlier because he had committed “homosexual acts” with nine junior high school boys.
Skube had moved back to Chatham and died in 2022.
Shea’s report dates back to sexual misconduct in the 1960s and specifically involved two girls, ages five and six. The two, identified as “Abby” and “Annie” in a survivor narrative, detailed hundreds of accounts of abuse to the AG office and its long attempt to get the deceased priest on the diocese’s list of child sex abusers.
Starting in 2002, Abby and Annie went to former Bishop George Lucas with their story. Lucas, who now serves as archbishop of the Archdiocese in Omaha, Nebraska, told them Shea had died, offered an apology, and advised them to contact the state’s attorney. A similar response was seen in 2004 when they met with the diocese’s victims assistance coordinator.
Abby and Annie did go to attorney general investigators in 2018, which prompted renewed involvement from the diocese. Per the report, the two felt disregarded in their conversations and had to correct several omissions in the review board’s report.
“Through it all, Abby was left with the impression that the diocese and Bishop Paprocki prioritized their own interests over supporting survivors, and demonstrated a failure to truly listen and understand what survivors need along their path to healing,” the report concluded.
Another survivor identified as “Christopher” said a letter he sent to the bishop came without response from Paprocki, but instead from the diocese’s victims assistance coordinator. Christopher had leveled the accusation that he had been abused by Father Joseph Cullen O’Brien at Saint Patrick in Alton during the late 1960s.
While the diocese found the allegation credible and paid for his therapy, the lack of response from Paprocki was “like a nail in the coffin,” Christopher told investigators.
Paprocki’s transparency overall was also brought into question by the report, since the diocese’s homepage did not include a link to the substantiated cases of of sexual abuse of a minor by clergy until last September.
“The bishops lied,” said Michael W. McDonnell, communications manager for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). “There is no questioning the facts of the report – until 2018 when the investigation began, hierarchs in every Illinois diocese kept known abusers under wraps, declined to include them on their accused lists and refused to acknowledge the truth that survivors of abuse who came forward to make a report shared with them. It is to us, in a word, disgusting.”
SNAP is staging a protest outside of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception at 1:15 p.m. Wednesday.
In a statement, Paprocki thanked the AG’s office for their work and reminded the public of the diocese’s listing of substantiated cases. Shea joined that list in June 2019.
“As bishop of this diocese, I cannot undo the damages of the past, but I have been and continue to be fully committed to ensuring we do all what we can to prevent abuse from happening again,” Paprocki said, adding that the diocese was “not aware of a single incident of sexual abuse of a minor by clergy alleged to have occurred in this diocese in nearly 20 years.”
Reporters Patrick Keck and Steven Spearie of The State Journal-Register contributed to this report.