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	Suit Accuses Former Rockford-Area Priest of Sex Abuse Rockford Register Star [Illinois] May 25, 2006 http://www.rrstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060525/NEWS/105250066 A lawsuit filed Wednesday in Wheaton accuses a Catholic priest who formerly served in a parish in the tiny village of Lee, about 35 miles south of Rockford, of sexually abusing a 10-year-old altar boy at a church in the Diocese of Joliet. Tim Shanahan, the plaintiff in the civil suit, alleges that the Rev. William Virtue repeatedly molested him at St. Mary's Church in Mokena in the early 1980s. The suit accuses the Joliet diocese of harboring an abusive priest. Shanahan's brother, Dan, has filed a similar suit against the Joliet diocese alleging that he was abused by another priest, the Rev. James Burnett, at the same parish. Virtue, who has served at various churches in the Rockford, Joliet and Peoria dioceses, has been placed on administrative leave by Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria and has agreed to no longer publicly function as a priest or wear clerical garb.
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