Chicago Injury Attorney Blog

The Archdiocese of Chicago has agreed to settle two separate lawsuits accusing Catholic priests of child sex abuse. Over the last 30 years, the archdiocese has paid over $65 million to settle approximately 250 such claims filed.

The first settlement of $1.2 million is for an Illinois child sex abuse lawsuit filed by the family of a boy who says he was sexually abused by former priest Daniel McCormack. The boy, now 16, will receive $1.1 million. His mother is to receive $100,000.

McCormack is in a Jacksonville prison where he is serving a 5-year sentence after pleading guilty to molesting 5 boys when he was the pastor at Our Lady of the Westside School. The family’s sex abuse lawsuit accuses McCormack of molesting the boy in 2004, as well as during a White Sox game in 2005. The Cook County Circuit Court approved the clergy sex abuse settlement on Tuesday.

In September, the Chicago archdiocese agreed to pay the boy’s younger brother, also a McCormack abuse victim, $2.5 million. The archdiocese has so far paid almost $10 million to settle the abuse claims filed by McCormack’s victims. One more lawsuit, filed by the family of a boy who says he was abused from the 4th – 7th grades, is still pending.

In another case, the Archdiocese of Chicago has agreed to pay nearly $1.4 million to a man who says Catholic Rev. Chester Przybylo sexually abused him when he was a child. The man says the abuse began when he was just 13 in 1987 and continued through 1992. The plaintiff is now 30 and married.

Przybylo was never criminally charged, but documents indicate that the archdiocese knew about the allegations against him. The priest denies the abuse allegations and has filed a slander lawsuit against the alleged victim, the victim’s lawyers, and two groups that are involved in clergy abuse cases.

Chicago Archdiocese to pay $1.4M in sex-abuse case, AP, December 18, 2008

Abuse victim gets $1.2 mil., Chicago Sun-Times, December 18, 2008

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Archdiocese of Chicago