What the Attorney General found
In May 2023 the Illinois Attorney General concluded a multi-year investigation into child sexual
abuse by Catholic clergy in Illinois. Across the state’s six dioceses the report identified
451 clerics and religious brothers with substantiated claims, and at least
1,997 children abused between 1950 and 2019.
In the Archdiocese of Chicago, the report named 275 clerics, about 61% of the 451 named statewide and by far the most of any Illinois diocese. The Archdiocese covers Cook and Lake counties and is the largest Catholic jurisdiction in the state.
What that scale means for finding records
This is by far the largest jurisdiction in the state, and assignment histories here can run across many parishes and several decades. That size is an advantage to a claimant: a cleric moved repeatedly leaves a longer paper trail, not a shorter one.
You do not need to have reported the abuse at the time, and no criminal case needs to have
happened. Many of the people named in the Attorney General’s report were never charged.
Questions people ask
I never reported it.
Most people did not. A civil claim requires no report, no charge and no conviction, and the absence of one is not treated as evidence that nothing happened.
Does a criminal case have to have happened first?
No. A civil claim uses a lower standard of proof and is usually brought against the institution rather than the individual.