What happened to you in a parish of the Archdiocese of Chicago was not okay.

Two hundred and seventy-five priests and religious brothers with substantiated allegations, in the Archdiocese of Chicago alone. That's the Illinois Attorney General's count, from the report he put out on May 23, 2023, and it wasn't the Archdiocese's count: its own list had 150 names that morning. If you were a kid in a Chicago parish, a parish school, a seminary or a program the Archdiocese ran, any year from the 1950s on, and something happened that you have never quite put down, then yes. This is about you.

Free
Confidential
No obligation
You never pay a dollar

6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

This applies to you no matter what

The priest is dead. Most of them are; the Attorney General counted 330 of the 451 statewide as deceased. The cases were never really against the man. They are against the Archdiocese, which is still at 835 North Rush Street and is still settling claims this month.
It was a brother, or a nun, or a priest from one of the religious orders, not one of the Archdiocese's own men. Still counts. Forty-nine order priests went onto the Archdiocese's own list in October 2022, and the Attorney General folded them into his 275.
You looked, and his name is on neither list. Four of the eight priests in the settlements the Archdiocese reached this September had never been put on its list either, so you're in company.
You told someone at the time. A pastor, a nun, the school office, the Archdiocese itself. And you were told it was handled. Say so on the call. That is the kind of fact these cases turn on.
You never told a soul. Not then, not since. The Attorney General's office heard from more than 600 people, most of whom had carried it alone for decades.
You aren't asking for yourself. It's a husband, or a sister, or a parent in their eighties who can't make this call, and you're making it for them. Good. Plenty of people start exactly there.

The Archdiocese of Chicago record: what the public record says, and when

None of what's below is ours. The Attorney General wrote it, and the Archdiocese, and the courts, and the reporters who covered it, and we link to every one of them. We don't add to it. A name on a list is that list's finding and nothing more; where a man was convicted, we say so, and where he wasn't, we don't.

October 3, 2003

A $12 million settlement, split among 19 people whose claims concerned 12 priests, in shares that ran anywhere from $200,000 up to $1.7 million. As part of the deal it agreed to put up a website naming every priest with a credible accusation against him. That promise is where the Archdiocese's list comes from. CBS News.

August 12, 2008

Sixteen more claims, $12,675,000. Fourteen of them concerned ten priests, Robert Mayer and Norbert Maday among them; two concerned Daniel McCormack, who had pleaded guilty the summer before. Cardinal George's full deposition went up on the Archdiocese's own site the same day. Archdiocese news release.

January 22, 2014

Under a settlement agreement, the Archdiocese put thousands of pages of its own files on 30 priests online. The files showed men moved from parish to parish after complaints, under Cardinals Cody, Bernardin and George, and no record of anyone calling the police. The Archdiocese said its leaders had "made some decisions decades ago that are now difficult to justify." NPR.

November 6, 2014

Files on 36 more priests, which brought the pile to 15,000 pages, all told: more than 350 incidents in them, the earliest from 1952. McCormack's file was held back because his civil cases were still open. NBC Chicago.

October 14, 2022

The Archdiocese added 71 names to its list of clergy with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor, taking it from 78 to 149: archdiocesan priests accused only after they died, 49 religious-order priests, and a handful of priests on loan from other dioceses. Its general counsel said every archdiocesan cleric added had already been reported to police. Chicago Catholic.

May 23, 2023

The Illinois Attorney General's Report on Catholic Clergy Child Sex Abuse named 275 clerics and religious brothers with substantiated allegations in the Archdiocese of Chicago, against the 150 the Archdiocese listed at the time. Statewide: 451 clerics, 1,997 survivors. It says of one pastor that "the archdiocese knew what Holihan was doing to children years before it removed him from the pastorate — but during that time, it did nothing to stop him," and of Robert Mayer that the Archdiocese "knew of his sexual abuse of children in the early 1980s but refused to remove him from ministry." When Cardinal Cupich said no one in it had been hiding in plain sight, the Attorney General answered that 62 of the 125 unlisted names came off the Archdiocese's own spreadsheet. Illinois Attorney General, Archdiocese of Chicago.

November 24, 2025

Three former students filed suit against the Archdiocese: one from Quigley Preparatory Seminary in the 1980s over Father Daniel Holihan, two from St. Christina school over Father John Curran. The complaints allege the Archdiocese had more than twenty misconduct reports about Holihan going back to the 1960s, complaints about Curran from the 1960s, and reassigned both men anyway. Both priests are dead. Both are on the Archdiocese's list. The Archdiocese declined to comment. CBS Chicago.

September 10, 2026

Nine settlements in two weeks, $5.4 million, over eight priests, for abuse alleged between the early 1970s and the late 1990s of children aged 6 to 14. Two of the nine concern Norbert Maday. Four of the eight men have never been put on the Archdiocese's list. The Archdiocese said in its statement that it has paid more than $400 million to survivors and that the incidents date from 30 to 50 years ago. Sun-Times.

We checked this on September 11, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from September 10, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in an Archdiocese of Chicago lawsuit

The Archdiocese, first. On paper it is the Catholic Bishop of Chicago, a corporation sole, and it is the defendant in nearly every one of these cases, with the parish or the school usually named beside it. The theory isn't complicated. An archdiocese assigns priests. It decides who gets a parish, who gets moved and where. Assign a man the chancery has already been warned about, tell the parish nothing, and that is negligence. The complaints say so, in about those words. Read the 2014 files, then the 2023 report, then the complaints from last November, and the sequence never changes. A report comes in. There's a meeting. The priest gets moved.

The priest himself is usually beside the point. Most of them are dead, and the ones still alive were removed from ministry long ago. That is why these cases are pleaded against what the Archdiocese knew and what it did, not against a dead man's estate. And the Archdiocese can pay. It has never filed for bankruptcy, there is no claims deadline, and by its own count it has settled around 300 cases involving about 100 priests since 2001, more than $400 million in all. One case at a time. Nine of them this September.

Some of the men have a page of their own here, because their records are their own: Father Daniel McCormack, who pleaded guilty in 2007; Father Joseph Fitzharris, convicted in 1987; Father Robert Mayer, convicted after his 1991 indictment; Father Norbert Maday, convicted in Wisconsin in 1994; Father Vincent McCaffrey, convicted in federal court on child-pornography counts; and Father John Smyth of Maryville, who was never charged and is not on the Archdiocese's list. If your years were under one of them, that page is the better place to start.

Your deadline: the Illinois statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims

Illinois took the deadline off in 2014. For a childhood sexual abuse claim there is no statute of limitations left, none, under 735 ILCS 5/13-202.2 as it has read since then. That part is real.

Here is the catch, and it is why we ask your birth year. The 2014 law did not reach backward. If your claim had already died under the old rules, it stayed dead; the Illinois courts have said that more than once. The rough line is 1983. Born that year or after, and your claim was still breathing on the day the law changed, which means you can file on your age and nothing else. Born earlier, and a lawyer needs a few more facts. When you first understood that what happened caused the harm you carry. Whether anyone at the parish or the Archdiocese was told, and what they said back. Illinois keeps that second path open when an institution kept quiet, and the 2014 files and the 2023 report are, in large part, a record of an institution keeping quiet.

In plain words. For a lot of Chicago Catholic kids born after 1982 there is no clock at all. For everyone born earlier there may still be a way, but it turns on facts only you know. Either way it takes a conversation to know, not a guess.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You have never said it out loud. Not to a spouse, not to a priest, not to anyone.
You don't have a word for it, and you're half convinced it wouldn't count.
You stayed in the Church. You still go. Plenty of the people in these cases do.
It was a lay teacher or a coach, not a priest.
You live in another state now. Most people who grew up in Chicago parishes do.

Parishes, schools and programs covered

Every parish and parish school of the Archdiocese of Chicago in Cook and Lake counties, open or closed · the archdiocesan high schools and seminaries, Quigley among them · Maryville Academy and the other homes and programs its priests were sent to run · parishes served by religious-order priests and brothers, who are on the list too. A parish in Joliet, Rockford or another Illinois diocese? The questions still work. Answer them and say where on the call.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue the Archdiocese of Chicago?

People do, steadily. Three former students filed in November 2025. Then this September, nine settlements in two weeks. The cases name the Archdiocese, not only the priest. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were born and what happened, which is what the questions above sort out.

So what did the Attorney General actually say about Chicago, back in 2023?

Two things, mainly. That 275 clerics and religious brothers had substantiated allegations of abusing children in the Archdiocese, where the Archdiocese's own list stopped at 150. And that for decades the Archdiocese had moved men it had been warned about from one parish to the next. That was May 23, 2023, and the Archdiocese quarrels with some of the counting to this day. The pattern, it hasn't quarreled with.

I looked him up and he isn't on the Archdiocese's list. Now what?

It matters less than you'd guess, honestly. The Attorney General found 125 names the Archdiocese had not listed, and four of the eight priests in this September's settlements were not on the list either. The list is the Archdiocese's own finding under its own policy. It's a starting point for a lawyer, and nowhere near the last word on what happened to you.

Does Illinois still have a statute of limitations for child sexual abuse?

Not since January 1, 2014, it doesn't, so long as your claim was still alive that day. If it had lapsed under the older rules already, then a lawyer needs discovery facts or concealment facts to reopen it, which is the whole reason we ask what year you were born.

How much has the Archdiocese of Chicago actually paid people?

Only what's public, and here it is. $12 million in 2003. Another $12.7 million in 2008. This September, $5.4 million across nine claims. And more than $400 million since 2001, all told, by the Archdiocese's own statement. Other people's cases, every one of them. We won't put a number on yours, and you should be wary of anyone who does.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Nothing, here. Every case is on contingency: the lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing at all.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed Illinois attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.