“To see the light at the end of the tunnel, and there is no longer a freight train racing towards me, is freeing,” Corcoran said in a statement released by his attorneys. He asked that Raoul’s office include his name in its final report and said the document’s release provided a sense of relief. Considine was removed from ministry in 1980 for undetermined reasons and died in 1988, the report states.Ĭorcoran told state investigators that he reported the abuse to the Rockford diocese in 2011 and that the church eventually determined his claims couldn’t be proven or disproven.

It includes the account of Bob Corcoran, who reported that Father Thomas Considine, who was a teacher at a high school in Elgin, repeatedly sexually abused Corcoran in the 1970s. Many of the accounts contained in the report have remained private for decades. (Instead), he just opened the door for (McCormack) to take advantage of other Black children.” “These perpetrators may never be held accountable in a court of law, but by naming them here, the intention is to provide a public accountability and a measure of healing to survivors who have long suffered in silence.”Īccording to the report, the mother of one of McCormack’s victims later said: “If Cardinal George (had) done the right thing, these other boys would not have been molested. “It is my hope that this report will shine light both on those who violated their positions of power and trust to abuse innocent children, and on the men in church leadership who covered up that abuse,” Raoul said, crediting the accusers for making the review possible. CHICAGO (AP) - More than 450 Catholic clergy in Illinois sexually abused nearly 2,000 children since 1950, the state’s attorney general found in an investigation released Tuesday, revealing that the problem was far worse than the church had let on.Īttorney General Kwame Raoul said at a news conference that investigators found that 451 Catholic clergy abused 1,997 children in Illinois between 19, though he acknowledged that the statute of limitations has expired in many cases and that those abusers “will never see justice in a legal sense.”

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