WBEZ | priest sexual abuse

Joliet bishop allows priest accused of sexual abuse to return to ministry

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:26:00 -0500

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests is demanding that Cardinal Francis George help oust a fellow bishop from a national committee intended to protect youth from sexual abuse by priests.

Joliet Bishop Daniel Conlon heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People.

Conlon allowed Father Lee Ryan to return to his ministry this week. The Diocese of Joliet put Ryan on leave in 2010 after a man in Florida alleged that he had been abused by Ryan repeatedly in the 1970s.

But in a statement, Bishop Conlon said a Vatican office made this determination: “Under church law in force at the time of the alleged abuse, Father Ryan was not guilty of a grave delict (serious crime) and therefore could not be removed permanently from ministry.”

The bishop is allowing Ryan to return to ministry, serving homebound parishioners of St. Edmund’s Parish in Watseka, Ill.

SNAP said Thursday that Bishop Conlon doesn’t deserve to head the U.S. bishops’ committee. SNAP spokesperson Barbara Blaine called the diocese “naïve” to think that shut-ins don’t have families or children visiting.

“The bishops have committed themselves to a zero-tolerance policy, and this is a direct violation of that policy,” Blaine said.

The alleged victim said he was “blindsided” by the bishop's actions: "Why would you risk putting a known predator ... why would they do that?" he asked.

He said the Diocese of Joliet won’t clearly explain to him why they made the decision to return Ryan to ministry.

“I asked them, 'What if he touches another young person?.' They said, ‘Well then it’s on our hands," he said. "I just felt like, well I guess when he touched me, they don’t consider it on their hands.”

A statement from the diocese said Father Ryan may ask to be reassigned to different duties.

The diocese and the Conference of Catholic Bishops did not return calls for comment.

Defrocked Chicago priest gets path to freedom

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:02:00 -0600

A court-approved agreement that classifies a defiant former Chicago priest as “sexually violent” could lead to his release from a Wisconsin treatment facility as early as November.

Norbert Maday, convicted in 1994 of sexually assaulting Chicago-area children, avoided a Wisconsin jury trial that would have begun Tuesday. Under the deal, prosecutors in Winnebago County won’t contest a supervised release of Maday, 73, if a state evaluation determines the defrocked priest is ready for that freedom. The agreement, approved by Circuit Court Judge Daniel J. Bissett, requires the evaluation to take place in nine months. If Maday remains in custody from there, re-evaluations will occur annually.

Kevin Greene, the case’s special prosecutor, said his team also wanted to avoid a jury trial.

“If you lose, he walks away with less supervision,” said Greene, an assistant district attorney in Brown County. The agreement “allows the closest supervision in the community that we can get” if the evaluation backs Maday’s release, he said.

In 1992, Winnebago County prosecutors charged Maday with molesting two boys, ages 13 and 14, from a Chicago Ridge parish at a 1986 religious retreat in Oshkosh. The court convicted him on three counts of sexual assault and one count of intimidating a witness and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

In 2007, as Maday completed the prison term, Wisconsin sought his confinement under a statute that puts “sexually violent persons” under control of the state Department of Health Services. As that case dragged on, Maday remained in the department’s Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Center in Mauston, a town in central Wisconsin. Tuesday’s agreement will keep Maday there as the department provides him treatment.

Maday’s attorney, Ralph Sczygelski of Manitowoc, told WBEZ the former priest “has denied he is a sexually violent person” and “continues to vehemently deny that anything bad happened” during the Oshkosh retreat. Maday did admit that there was “potentially sufficient evidence for a jury to find him to be a sexually violent person,” Sczygelski said.

Maday’s possible release could become embarrassing to Cardinal Francis George, head of the Chicago archdiocese, which employed Maday for almost three decades and paid him a stipend in prison. In 2000, George wrote letters of support to Maday as other top archdiocese officials pushed for early release. At another point, the church won Wisconsin permission for the body of Maday’s deceased mother to be brought to his prison. A letter from George thanked then-Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson for that “exceptional act of charity.”

In a court deposition, George said his view of Maday changed in the early 2000s after the archdiocese received more accusations about the priest. In 2007, George wrote to the Wisconsin Parole Commission, saying the archdiocese no longer was “capable of receiving him back into our system.” The archdiocese says the church laicized Maday that year.

A leading victim advocate said Tuesday’s agreement could lead to more sexual abuse.

“Given the fact that Father Maday has been given special treatment in the past, we fear that that will cause him to be potentially released sooner than he should be and we fear that that will put children at risk,” said Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a Chicago-based group known as SNAP.

But Sczygelski said a supervised release would land Maday in an apartment far from children, schools and parks. “The electronic monitoring these days — the science, the technology, basically — enhances safety tremendously,” Sczygelski said. “The neighborhood is told about it. They’re given pictures and everything. And if they see him stepping out of line, believe me, they’re calling 911.”

The archdiocese, asked whether it will help monitor Maday if Wisconsin releases him, noted that his church status has changed. “As a laicized priest, the archdiocese has no relationship with Mr. Maday,” spokeswoman Susan Burritt said in a written statement.

The archdiocese declined to say how many Maday victims have come forward or how many have received church compensation. “The archdiocese does not discuss individual claims or settlements,” the statement said.

Blaine said Maday has been accused of abusing “three to four dozen children.”

The archdiocese said Maday was associate pastor at six area parishes: St. John of God in Chicago from 1964 to 1966, St. Leo in Chicago from 1966 to 1969, St. Louis de Montfort in Oak Lawn from 1969 to 1977, St. Bede the Venerable in Chicago from 1977 to 1983, Our Lady of the Ridge in Chicago Ridge from 1983 to 1989, and St. Jude the Apostle in South Holland from 1989 to 1992.

“The archdiocese extends its prayers for God’s healing and peace to all those affected by child sexual abuse,” Burritt’s statement said.

Archdiocese of Chicago settles McCormack abuse case for $3.2 million

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:40:00 -0600

Attorneys for a victim of Daniel McCormack, the former priest and convicted sex offender, say they’ve reached a $3.2 million settlement with the Archdiocese of Chicago and Cardinal Francis George.

The Chicago-based law firms of Hilfman & Martin and Abels & Annes announced the agreement in a press release Tuesday.

The attorneys say the victim was between the ages of 10 and 12 when McCormack abused him. He’s one of the five victims McCormack admitted to abusing when the former priest pleaded guilty in 2007. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese says this settles the last of those five claims.

The lawsuit claimed church leaders failed to keep McCormack away from children even though they knew he had allegedly sexually abused minors.

William Martin, one of the attorneys for the victim, says he's pleased with the settlement.

"The plaintiff was able to stand up and look the Archdiocese in the face and say what happened to me shouldn't have happened, and you need to prevent this from happening again," Martin says.

He called it a step toward justice.

"Clearly, in our society, we need for decision-makers when they're presented with an option to protect themselves, their boss, their church, their school, their other, to stand up and protect children," Martin says.

He says settlements like this will help hold the Archdiocese accountable and get the word to victims so they can tell their stories.

The Archdiocese says in a statement that it does not comment on the specific details of settlements in such cases “out of respect for the privacy of all involved.” But it says victim-survivors can if they choose to do so, and it goes on to state: “The Archdiocese affirms its long-standing practice of reaching out to all victims of misconduct by clergy to resolve their claims in a just, compassionate and respectful way and continues to work for the healing of all those affected by the tragedy of child and adolescent sexual abuse.”

In August 2005, police arrested McCormack and released him without filing charges. According to records, the Cardinal’s sexual-abuse review board urged McCormack’s removal from ministry in October 2005, but the Cardinal didn’t follow that recommendation. The Cardinal didn’t remove Father McCormack from ministry until after his second arrest in January 2006.

After McCormack’s guilty plea, several other alleged victims came forward. At least two other civil cases are pending.

McCormack served 2 1/2 years of a five-year prison sentence. He remains in a mental health facility. The state is seeking to have him committed indefinitely under the Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act.

Cardinal blesses ‘healing garden’ for sex-abuse victims

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:25:00 -0500

Chicago’s top Catholic official Thursday blessed what his archdiocese is calling its “healing garden” for survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

The garden covers a plot next to Holy Family, a 19th century Chicago church at 1080 West Roosevelt Road, and includes more than two dozen varieties of trees, plants and flowers as well as a 600-pound bronze sculpture of a man, woman and child holding hands, dancing in a circle and smiling. An archdiocese committee that includes four abuse survivors started planning the project more than two years ago.

At a prayer service before giving his blessing, Cardinal Francis George said the garden shows “a permanent voice of victims, a permanent apology on the part of the church, and a permanent commitment by the ministers of the church . . . that we are there” for victims who seek help.

“We hope,” George added, “that, in the midst of this tragedy, there will be the possibility of new life, of resurrection of the heart in such a way that one can continue with new energy and new vigor and to be not trapped in something that brings death but, rather, find new life — with the help of others and the help of God — that will be, itself, a light to the world.”

But the garden isn’t impressing some victims of Catholic clerical abuse.

“Cardinal George and other church officials have empowered and enabled sexual predators to abuse more children,” said Barbara Blaine, president of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “Instead of being punished for those reckless actions, many have been promoted.”

Blaine says many church officials ought to face criminal investigation.

U.S. bishops reject candidate tied to Chicago sex abuse

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:47:00 -0600

U.S. Catholic bishops have chosen a New York prelate to lead their organization for the next three years. The move is an unexpected defeat for an Arizona bishop under fire for his links to an imprisoned Chicago child molester.

At a meeting Tuesday in Baltimore, the bishops elected New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, a St. Louis native, as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Dolan’s victory is the first time in decades the nation’s bishops have passed over a sitting vice president for their top post.

That vice president, Tuscon Bishop Gerald Kicanas, once served as rector of a Chicago archdiocese seminary in northwest suburban Mundelein. In that post, Kicanas heard about three instances of alleged sexual misconduct by a student named Daniel McCormack.

The nature of those incidents is murky. An archdiocese-commissioned report describes one as “sexual abuse of a minor” and says they occurred when McCormack attended a nearby seminary college—before he arrived in Mundelein.

Kicanas approved McCormack’s 1994 ordination. As a Chicago priest, McCormack sexually abused more than a dozen boys. Cardinal Francis George had started receiving allegations about the abuse by September 2005 but didn’t pull McCormack out of the ministry until Chicago police arrested the priest in January 2006. The roles of Kicanas and George, the outgoing USCCB president, were the subject of a WBEZ report last month.

The National Catholic Register last week pressed Kicanas for his reactions to the report. A written response from the bishop said revelations about the three alleged sexual-misconduct incidents led to a church evaluation of McCormack. He said the evaluation sought “to determine if he could live a celibate life and if there was any concern about his affective maturity.”

The evaluation found that McCormack’s alleged misconduct was “experimental and developmental,” Kicanas added. “I would never defend endorsing McCormack’s ordination if I had had any knowledge or concern that he might be a danger to anyone.”

On Sunday morning some victims of priest sexual abuse led a Chicago protest against Kicanas, warning that it would be a mistake for U.S. bishops to elect him. Some conservative Catholic bloggers, meanwhile, seized on the controversy and cited additional reasons to oppose Kicanas. They said he wouldn’t uphold many Catholic teachings strictly enough.

Kicanas, 69, has pushed for dialogue between the church’s liberal and conservative wings. In Arizona, the bishop has spoken against abortion and gay marriage but hasn’t denied communion to politicians who favor abortion rights. On immigration, Kicanas has sided against a tough new Arizona law and pushed for a federal overhaul that would include a legalization of undocumented residents. Kicanas promoted “comprehensive immigration reform” as recently as Friday, when he gave the keynote speech at a church conference in Hammond, Indiana, just southeast of Chicago.

Dolan, 60, appeals to many Catholic conservatives as a more aggressive defender of church orthodoxy. Last year, he signed a statement that united leading evangelicals and Catholics against abortion and gay marriage.

The Vatican installed Dolan as New York archbishop last year. He had spent almost seven years as archbishop of Milwaukee.

In Baltimore, where the bishops are holding their annual fall meeting, Dolan beat Kicanas in the third round of voting, 128-111. Dolan will replace Cardinal George as president this week. In another win for conservatives, the bishops elected Louisville Archbishop Joseph Kurtz to take Kicanas’ place as their vice president.

An expert on the U.S. bishops says it’s hard to know whether the latest McCormack flare-up shifted votes against the Tuscon bishop. “Clearly Kicanas was being attacked and accused of making bad decisions when he was rector of the seminary,” says Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. “On the other hand, Dolan has also been criticized by victims of sexual abuse.”

In August, according to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), Dolan “quietly, recklessly and deceptively” let a priest resign from his Harlem parish without mentioning that “at least nine men” had accused the priest of sexually abusing them as children.

But a SNAP statement applauds Tuesday’s defeat of Kicanas: “We can hope that his shocking defeat will help deter future clergy sex crimes and coverups by the Catholic hierarchy.”

The USCCB has no formal authority over bishops but helps them promote Catholic teachings and coordinate positions on national issues such as marriage, immigration and health care. The organization has also formed policies to protect children from sexually abusive priests and other adults.