For many survivors, the hardest part of a clergy abuse claim is making the first call. It can feel like stepping back into something you have kept closed for years. It helps to know exactly what happens. Nothing is set in motion by asking a question, and every decision stays yours.
You do not need to have reported the abuse, and nobody needs to have been charged. A civil claim asks what a diocese or religious order knew, what it should have known, and what it did. Attorney Ervin Nevitt, a partner at Coplan + Crane (Illinois bar registration 6319808, admitted 2014), reviews these cases.
Step one: you speak to a person
Not a form and not an intake script. You do not have to describe what happened in order to have the conversation. Your memory of names, places, and dates is enough to start, even if it is incomplete.
Step two: we look into who had a duty
We look at which institution was responsible, what it knew, what records exist, and whether a claim can still be brought. That work costs you nothing.
For Catholic clergy, that often starts with the Illinois Attorney General's 2023 report. It named 451 Catholic clerics and religious brothers as substantiated child sex abusers across all six Illinois dioceses, who abused at least 1,997 children. Its data analysis tracks those abusers year by year from 1950 through 2019. The report is at clergyreport.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov, with a search function and a section for each diocese.
The investigation began in the second half of 2018 and covered the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Dioceses of Belleville, Joliet, Peoria, Rockford, and Springfield. Investigators reviewed more than 100,000 pages of diocesan documents. When it opened, only Chicago and Joliet posted lists of substantiated abusers, naming 103 men between them.
By the diocese where they ministered, the report counted 275 abusers in Chicago, which covers Cook and Lake counties, against 150 on the archdiocese's own list at the close of the investigation. Joliet had 69 against 52, Peoria 51 against 43, Belleville 43 against 42, Springfield 32 against 23, and Rockford 24 against 24. The figures total 494, more than 451, because some men ministered in more than one diocese. The report also names 160 clerics and religious brothers substantiated by Catholic sources whom the dioceses had not disclosed. If a diocese's own list does not include the man who abused you, the Attorney General's list is the next place to look.
Each entry lists the man's Illinois assignments, the number of reported survivors, the dates and places of reported abuse, and the date the diocese says it first received a claim about him. If that date falls before your abuse, the diocese had a complaint on file while he still had access to you. The recurring pattern is transfer rather than removal: a priest moved to another parish after a complaint, with the complaint recorded in an assignment history that still exists.
We also look at whether a religious order was involved. Not every priest or brother answers to a bishop. Members of orders such as the Jesuits or Oblates often work in order-run schools, hospitals, and orphanages, as well as parishes. The Attorney General identified more than 250 religious order clerics and brothers as substantiated abusers, from more than 30 orders in Illinois. Diocesan representatives told investigators those men are not theirs, and dioceses generally refer allegations to the order, so a complaint made straight to an order may never reach the diocese. The Archdiocese of Chicago acknowledged nearly 60 order members with substantiated allegations who served within it, but left them off its public list because they had no diocesan ministry or were non-ordained brothers.
If you were abused at an order-run Catholic school, the order kept the man's file and decided where he went next. The diocese may hold records too, because survivors often report to the diocese where the abuse happened, and church law gives the bishop authority to watch over Catholic schools in his territory. A claim can involve the order, the diocese, or both.
If the abuse happened outside the Catholic Church, the Attorney General's report will not cover it. We look instead at the congregation, its regional or national body, and any youth program, camp, or school the faith runs. Every member of the clergy in Illinois is a mandated reporter under Section 4 of the Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act (325 ILCS 5/4), required to report immediately to the Department of Children and Family Services when they have reasonable cause to believe a child known to them in that role may be abused. Whether that happened, and what leaders did instead, is often central. In a self-governing congregation, the local church or its board may be the only institution involved. Where a regional body ordains, places, or disciplines clergy, that body may hold the personnel history.
These claims are usually brought against a diocese, religious order, or other religious institution, not only the individual. Negligent retention is the theory that most often carries them, though several usually run together, and which fits depends on your facts. The responsible body is usually a private organization, so the Tort Immunity rules for Illinois public bodies do not apply in the same way.
Step three: you decide
We tell you plainly what is possible. Timing depends on the facts and is something we check with you. If you decide not to go ahead, that is the end of it, and what you told us stays confidential.
Step four: if you go ahead, we carry it
We handle the filings, deadlines, records, and the institution's insurers. Many survivors file a sexual abuse lawsuit anonymously in Illinois, and steps can be taken to protect your identity in the court record.
Once a lawsuit is filed, Illinois Supreme Court Rule 214 lets us serve written requests for specified documents. The responding party must identify everything responsive in its possession, produce it as kept in the usual course of business or organized by the categories requested, and sign an affidavit stating whether the production is complete. In a clergy case, those requests usually reach assignment histories, personnel files, personnel board and review board records, and parish and school records such as rosters, server schedules, and trip records that place the abuser and the child together. A congregation of any faith that is a party to a civil case must produce relevant records under the same rules.
Those files can be revealing. In Belleville, personnel board minutes from 1985 read, "In making assignments, must not forget about Fr. Kownacki," more than a decade after the diocese knew he abused children. At the trial of a survivor's lawsuit, the diocese's vice-chancellor testified that his abuse was common knowledge among diocesan leaders when he was transferred to a new parish in 1982.
Churches sometimes resist. The report describes the Diocese of Rockford refusing to give a priest's personnel file to Kane County prosecutors, and the Illinois appellate court holding that internal church rules did not shield evidence of child sexual abuse by priests from discovery. Illinois keeps a clergy privilege (735 ILCS 5/8-803), but it is written around confessions and admissions to a cleric acting as a spiritual advisor, and the court decides whether a document falls within it.
Common Questions Around the First Call
Do I need to have reported it? No. A civil claim requires no police report, no charge, and no conviction. Most people we speak with never reported.
Does someone have to have been convicted? No. A civil case uses a lower standard of proof than a criminal one and is usually brought against the institution rather than the individual.
It was a long time ago. That is the norm in this work rather than the exception. What governs it is your age at the time, who was responsible, and the particular facts.
He is not in the Attorney General's report. That does not mean you will not be believed. The report counts only men substantiated by the time it was published.
He was a religious brother at a Catholic high school. Often the order that ran the school is responsible, and sometimes the diocese too. His absence from a diocese's list tells you little.
The abuse happened in a non-Catholic church. The report does not apply, but the rest does, including the mandated reporter law and the court rules on records.
Call (708) 671-6858 for a free, confidential case review or visit https://survivorsofabuseil.com/clergy-sexual-abuse-lawyer-il/.
