A sweeping five-year investigation found 451 Catholic clergy and religious leaders sexually abused at least 1,997 children in Illinois since 1950, wrongdoing often enabled through denial and cover-ups by church officials.
offered the boy beer at the rectory and then, in the middle of the night, the child awakened to find the priest sexually assaulting him.The pastor told him to keep it a secret, he recounted decades later to Illinois attorney general’s office investigators in one of a series of harrowing victim narratives revealed in a“This is a good thing, but it’s just between you and I,” he recalled the priest telling him as a boy, according to the report. “You don’t ever say anything to anybody.
Experts say the investigation’s staggering numbers illustrate that the scope and magnitude of clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church is far greater than previously understood. McGlone, a senior research fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University, also urged the church to undergo “lamentation and penance.”
He recalled the priest claimed to be helping boys enjoy their sexuality and teaching them the ways of the world, the report said. The victim recalled walking into the rectory once and witnessing “practically an orgy.”“That’s what made it seem OK,” the victim recalled to investigators. “He’s the priest. If a priest is telling you it’s OK, it must be OK.”
Cardinal Francis George wrote in a 2005 declaration that, “the Archdiocese does not consider itself in any way responsible for the activities of Robert E. Mayer,” and “is not to be held liable for any scandal or harm to the souls for which he has been or is responsible,” the report recounted. After the first act of abuse, the priest warned the boy, who was by then in high school, that “no one can know about what happened tonight.”The abuse continued on hundreds of occasions over three years, according to the report.
Strand was removed from ministry in 1993; he was convicted of criminal sexual abuse of a teenager in 1995 and served 21 months in prison, the report said.
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