CHICAGO (IL)
The Pillar [Washington DC]
March 28, 2025
By JD Flynn and Ed. Condon
The Archdiocese of Chicago took an unusual step this week in response to a 2024 lawsuit alleging new counts of sexual abuse against a laicized Chicago priest, the notorious sexual abuser Daniel McCormack.
In a countersuit filed this week, the Chicago archdiocese said that several men conspired for years to commit fraud, pretending to be McCormack’s victims in order to secure settlements.
The story told by the Chicago archdiocese is extraordinary. But as the lawsuit begins, it’s worth asking what its long-term effect in the Chicago archdiocese might be on both how dioceses consider historical allegations of abuse and on how accusations against priests are handled by bishops.
According to a suit filed Monday, a group of young men worked together more than 10 years ago to coordinate a scheme in which they would falsely accuse McCormack of sexual abuse in order to secure legal settlements.
The scheme, which reportedly included several incarcerated men, including gang members and convicted murderers, came to light in 2013 when one defendant talked about the scheme on a recorded call from jail, the Chicago archdiocese says. And subpoenas of other jail house calls allegedly revealed defendants discussing how easy it was to “lick” the archdiocese — to pull a scam, and receive a payout.
“I need some ass free money, too,” one defendant reportedly said. “As long as [McCormack] ain’t got to touch me for real, I don’t give a [redacted].”
The defendant’s interlocutor on the telephone affirmed that he also had “got to get on the money train, man.”
For its part, the archdiocese says that ringleaders of the fraud told their friends to claim falsely that they had met McCormack at a parish or through the basketball team he coached, and that in exchange for coaching friends to a settlement, the men took a cut of the funds.
The leaders “had a financial motive to identify, select, and assist other persons to bring false claims of abuse for profit,” the suit states.
But it wasn’t an Oceans 11 style band of merry thievery. The defendants and a web of alleged co-conspirators are connected to each other, some related, some from the same neighborhood, others connected by their gang connections, the archdiocese said.
According to the archdiocese, while social media postings show that the defendants in the case used their money for luxury cars and lavish trips to Las Vegas and Miami, and the suit alleges widespread cooperation among defendants, it also charges that disputes over payouts, called “scripts,” led to violent beatings.
Still, it is not surprising that the scheme was initially successful. McCormack was a noxious abuser, who was arrested in 2006 and pled guilty to molesting five boys at his Chicago parish. After his guilty plea, more people came forward to allege abuse, and were generally offered settlements, counseling, and other support. Enough people accused McCormack of abuse that a diocesan employee said recently that the archdiocese is unsure how many people altogether made charges against the priest.
McCormack has been laicized, was released from a state mental health facility in 2021, and lives in a Chicago apartment.
But allegations have continued to be made against the priest.
And the archdiocese has sued over the subject before.
In 2017, the archdiocese won a lawsuit against Ahmond Williams, a man it said had made a false allegation against McCormack.
In that case, the archdiocese subpoenaed hundreds of hours of prison phone calls, in which it said there was evidence that the man was lying about being abused.
At the time, the archdiocese said that false claims are “an affront to real victims, and attorney James Geoly said in a statement last week that “real survivors of abuse who ultimately are the ones harmed by fraud.”
“False claims make it necessary to investigate all claims more aggressively, which places a greater burden on true survivors,” Geoly said. “Our attention is directed toward survivors, not fraudsters seeking to gain financially from others’ pain and suffering.”
In 2017, the archdiocese also said it had an obligation to be a good steward of the Church’s resources set aside for abuse claims. Indeed, it seems likely that managing Church assets is part of the reason why the archdiocese filed its suit last week.
In a 2013 phone call, Williams explained to an incarcerated collaborator that a false claim could mean getting “forever paid” by the archdiocese.
At the archdiocese, Williams said, “they’ve got everlasting money, bro.”
Indeed, the archdiocese has spent millions on settlements related to McCormack, most of which has come from archdiocesan investment income and real estate sales. But even in the Chicago archdiocese, there is only so much to sell. And amid consistently declining Catholic practice and population, the archdiocese has declined by 100 parishes since 2020, and by 200 since 1990.
Since the first wave of clerical sexual abuse scandals broke across the Church in the United States nearly 25 years ago, dioceses and archdioceses have had to reckon with decades of mishandled, and in some cases maliciously ignored historical instances of sexual abuse.
Further cycles of scandal have followed, most notably in 2018 after the Pennsylvania grand jury report and the passage of so-called “look back laws” carving exceptions in state statutes of limitations for victims to sue the Church.
Facing enormous, and often very justified, public outrage, to say nothing of the legitimate claims of victims, Church authorities have set aside vast amounts of ecclesiastical money — including through the liquidation of Church assets and parish properties — and set up funds to compensate victims of historical crimes.
But the efforts to settle a flood of historical claims have often led to expedited consideration of claims and, some canonists, lawyers, and priests’ advocates have warned, allowed through sometimes malicious and false accusations.
Practices are inconsistent, and many clerical abuse victims will attest to the difficulty of getting even promised expenses reimbursed in the dioceses where they were harmed, let alone seeing offers of settlements.
But the suit demonstrates that in some dioceses — like Chicago, evidently — there has been at least an implicit practice of accepting and settle some historical claims with little examination. The suit would seem to suggest that diocesan officials have decided that ought to be examined in the light of 25 years of experience.
While McCormack was a notorious abuser with a galling number of real victims who deserve justice, canonists have warned in recent years that other similar apparently vexatious claims may have been laid against the names of innocent men.
At the same time, priests have reported a low-level of trust in their diocesan bishops whom, many have said, they believe see their clergy as expendable liabilities when confronted with an accusation of abuse.
That sense amongst clergy, whether fair or unfair assessment of their bishops, is often compounded by real institutional disparities in how accusations of abuse, including historical accusations, are treated when they concern either a bishop or a priest — with the episcopate often appearing to benefit from more solid institutional support, procedural due process rights, and a more reflexive presumption of innocence.
But if the Chicago archdiocese wins its case, it may strengthen the sense among some American priests that change is due in the practice of some dioceses — and that among those changes, that the rules and norms of the Dallas Charter and Essential Norms, established by the bishops the wake of 2001, are due for a review.