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 Diocese of Peoria, the report named 51 clerics, 11% of the
statewide total. Third highest of the six Illinois dioceses.
The diocese covers 26 counties across central Illinois, bounded by the Mississippi on the west and the Indiana border on the east. Established in 1875, it is consolidating its roughly 156 parishes into 75 under a reorganization announced in 2024.
What that scale means for finding records
Peoria spans 26 counties and has existed since 1875. Long institutional life means long files. If the parish you remember has since merged or been renamed, that does not matter; the diocese’s records follow the history.
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.