Over a period of about seven decades, the Catholic Church in Illinois has allowed more than 450 credibly accused child sex abusers to have access to parishioners, The New York Times reported.
The figure is more than four times that which the church had publicly disclosed before 2018 when the state of Illinois began investigating the matter.
The state's report found that "clergy members and lay religious brothers" abused at least 1,997 children since 1950 in the state’s six dioceses.
"The report adds 149 names to lists of child sex abusers whom the dioceses themselves had publicly identified before or during the investigation," The Times' reported.
"That brings the total number of identified abusers to 451, the report says. The additional names were supplied by victims who came forward and shared their accounts with investigators, who then followed up on their accounts. Investigators also reviewed more than 100,000 pages of files held by the dioceses, and interviewed church leaders and their representatives."
One problem priest who was moved from parish to parish was Thomas Francis Kelly, who had abused more than 15 boys ranging in age from 11 to 17 during the 1960s and '70s. Kelly's abuse was so prominent that it was a topic of discussion amongst the victim's peers, the Times reported.
Before the report's release, the state's six dioceses released a statement claiming that the church “has been at the forefront of dealing with sexual abuse of minors for many years.”
Mike McDonnell, a spokesman for SNAP, an advocacy group for victims of clerical sexual abuse, responded to the statement saying that the state's report "clearly tells us that no one knew more about abuse, and no one did less about it, than these dioceses themselves."
Read the full article over at The New York Times.