Finally: The fraud has been exposed
It's been almost 20 years now. In January 2006, then-Fr. Dan McCormack of the Archdiocese of Chicago was removed from active ministry and later sentenced to five years in prison for groping several minor boys on the West Side of Chicago from 2001 to 2005.
From there, however, the story really took off, and the makings for a great fictional novel began.
It was the perfect storm: Fr. McCormack's parish served an impoverished black community desperate for any financial lifeline, the allegations were recent rather than historic, McCormack pled guilty to the groping allegations against him in return for the recommended five-year sentence, and the media frenzy over the "abuse crisis" was in full swing.
Thus, for nearly the past 20 years, dozens and dozens of accusers have come forward and filed lawsuits or made claims with the Archdiocese alleging that they were molested or raped by McCormack, and each progressive iteration of such claims have become more absurd, more implausible, and very obviously fraudulent. (The Illinois Attorney General's web site reports some 130 McCormack accusers.) And for many years now, Chicago media has dutifully reported the lurid details of each new crazy lawsuit without as much as a hint of skepticism regarding the veracity of the bogus allegations.
But the Archdiocese of Chicago also deserves an honorable mention because it was almost assuredly shoveling out many millions of dollars in confidential settlements to these folks which, in turn, only funded more litigation against it and attracted more crooks and fraudsters eager to claim that McCormack molested them too in order to make their own riches. It could well have been the greatest overall fraud perpetrated against the Catholic Church in this country, and yet the media sat by silently.
Worst kept secret
But the media knew was it was doing all along. It was a poorly kept secret in Chicago media for many years that the McCormack cases were almost entirely fraudulent, yet they published their stories anyway without question. As we wrote in a post here over seven years ago, in August of 2017:
"It has long been a poorly kept secret in the neighborhoods near St. Agatha Catholic Church and within the offices at the Archdiocese of Chicago that most, if not nearly all, of the abuse accusations lodged against ex-priest Daniel McCormack are completely bogus."
And now, years later, insiders now tell us that the Church in Chicago has paid out several tens of millions of dollars for phony claims regarding McCormack.
The full story has still yet to be publicly told, but the Chicago Tribune, who has published several dozen sensational articles on the McCormack case in the past two decades, is finally getting wind to the fact that there is serious fraud being perpetrated against the Church, especially in the McCormack case.
This past week, the Tribune reported that the Archdiocese of Chicago announced that it filed a lawsuit against a number of fraudsters who falsely claimed that they had been abused years ago by McCormack. Some of the fraudsters are actually on audio admitting that they had no connection or interaction with McCormack whatsoever but were eager to get in on the free cash that the Church was doling out.
One eager swindler was especially thrilled at the prospect of free cash "as long as [McCormack] ain't got to touch me for real."
Needless to say, these bogus claims are an incredible affront to genuine victims of abuse by priests many decades ago and to the pastoral response of the Church to victims.
Time for a new narrative
Here there is little doubt that a serious fraud has been perpetrated against the Church, but what it also signals is that far more investigation and coverage of this increasingly common type of fraud needs to happen.
Hopefully, next time it will not take many years of payouts on many dozens of phony claims – robbing the Church of resources to build the faith and serve the poor – before the media does its job and exposes its readers to the truth.
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Want to learn about the rampancy of false accusations against priests?:
- "The Great Shakedown Keeps A-Rollin': Phony Claims Continue at Epic Pace, Here Are The Facts" (January 2024)
- The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church (Amazon.com)
