The Chicago priest who confessed in 2007 to sexually abusing five boys has been named in a new lawsuit by four other alleged victims.
Daniel McCormack served two and a half years of a five-year sentence for abuse during his tenure as teacher and basketball coach at Our Lady of the Westside School (which has since been changed to St. Agatha Academy.) Nine new abuse allegations have surfaced since that conviction.
The suit was filed in Cook County Circuit Court Monday against McCormack, Cardinal Francis George and the Chicago Archdiocese. NBC Chicago reports that the archdiocese and Cardinal George are involved because of their failure to look into allegations of abuse:
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests expressed disappointment that the latest allegations were revealed in the legal system."We are saddened by Cardinal George's continuing secrecy," said SNAP spokeswoman Therese Albrecht in a written statement. "We suspect that there are still others who were molested by McCormack who have not yet spoken up. Remember that prosecutors said, back when McCormack was first charged, that he was abusing on an almost daily basis. It's tragic that the archdiocese, with its considerable resources, isn't doing more to find and help these wounded children."
...
A child safety review completed after McCormack was arrested revealed the original abuse investigation conducted by the Archdiocese was mishandled. The archdiocese has since developed a new monitoring program.
The plaintiffs in the case now range in age from fifteen to 23. According to the Chicago Tribune, two of them allege more than 100 separate instances of abuse by McCormack, in which he "inappropriately sexually touched, rubbed and/or abused" the boys.
This lawsuit follows on the heels of another one filed just last week by another young man, who played for Our Lady of the Westside's basketball team that McCormack coached. It was the first lawsuit filed against McCormack since his criminal case; although four other boys have accused him of abuse, none of them have sued, and the archdiocese insists that some of their cases haven't been substantiated.
McCormack was defrocked in 2007, as the first set of allegations became public. Just before he was paroled last year, the Illinois attorney general filed a petition to keep him incarcerated in a treatment facility. He has been in a mental health facility as lawyers argue that case.