Sex Abuse in Catholic Church: Over 1,900 Minors Abused in Illinois, State Says

Background: Illinois is the latest state to detail decades of abuse.

Attorneys general and grand juries in a number of states have investigated sexual abuse in the church, including an investigation into the Archdiocese of Baltimore that was released last month. The many investigations were inspired by a sweeping report in 2018 on six dioceses in Pennsylvania, which stunned Catholics across the country.

The Illinois report was initiated by Lisa Madigan, Mr. Raoul’s predecessor as attorney general, who identified early in her investigation a significant gap between the number of clergy members who had been credibly accused and the much smaller number disclosed by the church.

Why It Matters: Questions about abuse by Illinois clergy members have lingered for years.

The effects of the clerical sex abuse crisis have rippled through the Catholic Church in the United States for decades, and burst into public view 20 years ago when the The Boston Globe documented a sprawling cover-up of abuse in church settings.

The Catholic Conference of Illinois estimates that Catholics make up about 27 percent of the state’s population, above the national average.

In the early 1990s, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago led a pioneering commission on sexual abuse in church settings, establishing a board made up mainly of lay people to evaluate accusations of abuse against clergy members. But the report also documents how the Chicago archdiocese sometimes failed to act on its own recommendations.

Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, said in a statement Tuesday that the archdiocese “has been at the forefront of developing and improving policies and programs to address the scourge of child sexual abuse and to support survivors.”

Mike McDonnell, a spokesman for SNAP, an advocacy group for victims of clerical sexual abuse, said, “This report clearly tells us that no one knew more about abuse, and no one did less about it, than these dioceses themselves.”.

What’s Next: Prosecutions appear unlikely in many of the cases described.

Most of the abuse documented in the report happened decades ago. The report acknowledges that criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits will be impossible for many victims, because of statutes of limitations and the fact that the majority of the perpetrators have died.

Some states, including California and New York, have enacted a “look-back window” allowing victims of child sex abuse to bring civil claims that would otherwise be barred by statutes of limitations, but Illinois is not among them.

The report was intended to provide “public accountability and a measure of healing to survivors who have long suffered in silence,” Mr. Raoul said at a news conference Tuesday morning. He said the dioceses had fulfilled their pledges to cooperate fully with the investigation.