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 Rockford, the report named 24 clerics, 5% of the
statewide total. The smallest figure of the six, which is not the same as the smallest problem, the report counted substantiated claims, not incidents.
The diocese covers Boone, Carroll, DeKalb, Jo Daviess, Kane, Lee, McHenry, Ogle, Stephenson, Whiteside and Winnebago counties.
What that scale means for finding records
Rockford spans eleven counties across northern Illinois, much of it rural. A cleric moved between small, widely separated parishes could be effectively unknown to the next community, which is exactly the pattern transfer records expose.
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
The person responsible has died.
A claim can still proceed against the institution that placed them in a position of trust.
I do not remember exact dates.
You are not expected to. These cases are built from the institution’s own records.