What happened to you in a parish of the Diocese of Joliet was not okay.

Sixty-nine. That is how many priests and religious brothers the Illinois Attorney General found with substantiated allegations of abusing children in the Diocese of Joliet, in the report he released on May 23, 2023. The diocese's own list, last revised September 27, 2024, runs to 76 names. And the diocese admitted, back in 2004, to more than 100 credible allegations between 1949 and 2004. If you were a kid in a parish or a parish school anywhere in the seven counties this diocese covers, any year since 1949, and something happened there that you have carried ever since, then this is about you.

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The priest is dead. Most of these men are; the diocese's own list marks 2021, 2020, 2019 beside name after name. The case was never really against him. It is against the diocese, which is still at 16555 Weber Road in Crest Hill, still publishing audited statements, and was sued again this January.
Maybe he wasn't even one of Joliet's priests but a Carmelite or a Franciscan or a Benedictine, or a man on loan from some other diocese, and you've assumed that lets the diocese off. It doesn't. The Attorney General found the diocese had disclosed exactly one such priest before his investigation began, and 13 by the time it ended, with four more it still hadn't named.
You looked, and his name is on neither list. So is the priest in the complaint filed this January. John Barrett is not on the diocese's list of 76 or the Attorney General's 69, and a Will County suit names him anyway. The lists are a floor, not a ceiling.
You told someone. A pastor, a nun, the school office, the chancery. And nothing came of it, or you were told it had been looked into. Say so on the call. In this diocese that is the kind of fact the record keeps turning up: a 1991 report the January complaint says was not acted on until 2001.
You never told a soul. Not then, not since. The Attorney General's office heard from hundreds of people who had carried it alone for forty or fifty years before they picked up the phone.
You aren't asking for yourself. It's a brother, a wife, a parent in their seventies who can't make this call. Good. Plenty of these start exactly there.

The Diocese of Joliet record: what the public record says, and when

None of what's below is ours. The Attorney General wrote it, and the diocese itself, and the Will County court, and the reporters who covered it, and every line links to where it came from. We don't add to it. A name on the diocese's list is that list's finding; a name in the Attorney General's report is his; a complaint is an allegation and nothing has been decided in it; where a man was convicted we say so, and Fred Lenczycki is the only priest below we call convicted. And because it matters for the first question above: the records here name Sts. Peter and Paul in Naperville, Immaculate Conception in Elmhurst, St. Joseph in Rockdale, the Cathedral of St. Raymond in Joliet and St. Pius X in Lombard through the diocese's own list, and St. Alexander in Villa Park, Notre Dame in Clarendon Hills and St. Isaac Jogues in Hinsdale through the January 2026 complaint and the Attorney General's report. Every other parish and school on this page is listed because the same diocese ran it in those years. No separate record on them is cited here.

March 13, 2013

To settle David Rudofski's suit over Father James Burnett, the diocese agreed to have the protective orders lifted on the personnel files of 15 priests. Burnett had served at St. Charles Borromeo in Bensenville, St. Mary in Mokena, Sts. Peter and Paul in Naperville and St. Raymond in Joliet. Bishop Conlon: "the dark cloud of the history of child abuse in this diocese has imposed itself almost every day." CBS Chicago.

April 30, 2014

The files went public: roughly 7,000 pages on 16 priests with credible allegations against them. Attorney Jeff Anderson filed five more suits on the strength of them. The diocese said that "with God's help, the diocese will continue to do its best to assure the safety of its children." CBS Chicago.

April 15, 2015

$4.137 million to 14 men, in Will County Circuit Court, over five priests: James Nowak, Michael Gibbney, Lawrence Gibbs, Myles White and Fred Lenczycki. The abuse alleged ran from the 1960s into the 1980s, and every one of the five had substantiated claims in the 16 files released the year before. Patch.

August 31, 2018

$1.4 million to three men, again in Will County, over Father Leonardo Mateo, a priest from the Philippines who served at Immaculate Conception in Elmhurst. The abuse alleged ran from 1980 to 1982, and none of the three had turned 11 yet. Mateo was gone from the diocese by 1984 and dead by 2004. Bishop Imesch, who'd die in 2015, had testified that priests with credible allegations against them stayed in ministry and the parishes were told nothing. CBS Chicago.

May 23, 2023

The Illinois Attorney General's Report on Catholic Clergy Child Sex Abuse is where the 69 comes from: that many abusive clerics and religious brothers in the Diocese of Joliet, by his count. The diocese's own admission from 2004 is in there too, "over 100 credible allegations" from 1949 to 2004. What he found was "slavish adherence to off-the-books, unwritten policies that derail justice for abuse survivors." One extern priest disclosed before his investigation, and not a single religious-order priest; 13 afterward, four still left off. "Yes. Yes." That's Bishop Imesch, under oath in 2005, quoted in the report, when the question put to him was whether he had knowingly kept priests in ministry after credible allegations. And there's Fred Lenczycki, accused of molesting at least nine altar boys at St. Isaac Jogues in Hinsdale in the early 1980s, whom Imesch, the report says, knew about by early 1985 and recommended to San Francisco anyway, then to St. Louis, disclosing nothing. Lenczycki went to prison in 2004. And again in 2019. Illinois Attorney General, Diocese of Joliet.

September 27, 2024

The diocese's own list, "Clergy with Substantiated Allegations of Sexual Abuse of a Minor or Vulnerable Adult," in the revision that is still the current one. It was first published April 9, 2006. There are 76 names on it now, 40 of them Joliet diocesan priests and 36 religious-order or extern priests, and each man's assignments are printed beside him. Sts. Peter and Paul in Naperville appears beside seven of them, Immaculate Conception in Elmhurst and St. Joseph in Rockdale beside six each, the Cathedral of St. Raymond and St. Pius X in Lombard beside five each. The diocese says the list is "the outcome of the diocesan review process and not to be interpreted as a legal judgement." Diocese of Joliet, list of clergy with substantiated allegations.

November 19, 2025

The diocese's audited financial statements for the year ended June 30, 2025, with an unmodified opinion from Eide Bailly. Total assets $135,381,452; net assets $61,826,596; $45,013,256 available for general expenditure within a year. Its reserve for "estimated unpaid insurance claims" rose to $20,399,099 from $13,926,605 the year before. Note 15: "Various legal actions and proceedings are pending against the Diocese," seeking "compensatory and punitive damages," which management does not expect to exceed reserves and insurance materially. Diocese of Joliet, audited financial statements.

January 12, 2026

A man of about 40, filing as John Doe, sued the Diocese of Joliet in Will County. The complaint alleges Father John F. Barrett abused him at St. Alexander in Villa Park in the early 1990s, when he was a small child, and that the diocese "breached its duty" of reasonable care: a first accuser had told the diocese in 1991 about abuse in 1968 at Notre Dame in Clarendon Hills, and nothing was done until that accuser reported again in 2001. Barrett was placed on leave in 2002 and reinstated. He died in 2014 and is on neither list. The plaintiff is represented by Gould, Grieco & Hensley. A complaint alleges; nothing has been decided. Patch.

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from January 12, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Diocese of Joliet lawsuit

The diocese, first. In an Illinois courtroom that is the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet, the entity at 16555 Weber Road in Crest Hill that assigns every priest in seven counties, decides who gets a parish and who gets moved, keeps the files and, when the Attorney General's investigators went through those files, turned out to have known a great deal. The theory isn't complicated. Put a man in a rectory beside a school and you are responsible for knowing what you know about him. Assign him anyway, tell the parish nothing, and that is negligence. The January complaint says so in about those words, over a 1991 report that sat for ten years. The Attorney General's report says it about Bishop Imesch's whole tenure, and quotes the bishop agreeing.

The priest himself is mostly beside the point. Of the 76 men on the diocese's list, the great majority are dead, laicized or long removed. That is why these cases are pleaded against what the diocese knew and did, not against a dead man's estate. And the diocese can pay, and has: $4.137 million to 14 men in 2015, $1.4 million to three in 2018, other settlements before and since, every one paid without a bankruptcy filing. It has not filed for Chapter 11. There is no claims deadline. Its own November 2025 statements show $61.8 million in net assets and a claims reserve it grew by six and a half million dollars in a single year. That is a defendant setting money aside for exactly these cases, one at a time.

The parish and the school are usually named beside the diocese, and where the priest belonged to a religious order, the Carmelites, the Franciscans, the Benedictines at Lisle, the order is named too. Who answers for a given year is a lawyer's question, not yours. Answer the questions above and say where.

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

Illinois took the deadline off in 2014. Under 735 ILCS 5/13-202.2(f), as it has read since January 1, 2014, an action for damages based on childhood sexual abuse "may be commenced at any time." That part is real, and it is why the Will County complaint filed this January could be filed at all.

Here's the catch, though, and it's the reason we ask what year you were born. The same sentence of the 2014 law limits it to claims that weren't already time-barred the day it took effect. A claim that had died under the older rules stayed dead. The rough line is 1983. Born that year or later, and your claim was still alive on the day the law changed, so you can file on your age and nothing else. Born earlier, and a lawyer needs more. Under subsection (b) the clock runs from when you discovered both that the abuse happened and that it caused the harm you carry, not from the abuse itself. Under subsection (d-1) it does not run at all while the abuser, or anyone acting in his interest, was concealing or manipulating. Whether a diocese that moved men without a word to the next parish was "acting in the interest of the abuser" is exactly what these cases argue about, and the Attorney General's findings are the raw material.

In plain words. For most kids of this diocese born in 1983 or later, there is no clock. For everyone born earlier there may well be a way. The Archdiocese of Chicago, on September 10, 2026, paid $5.4 million to settle nine claims from the 1970s through the 1990s, nearly all of them from the older side of that line, so it is a way other people have already walked. But it turns on facts only you know, and a lawyer decides, not a web page. Either way it takes a conversation, 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, a coach or a youth minister, not a priest.
You told the diocese years ago and were told it couldn't be substantiated. The January complaint is about a man the diocese said exactly that about in 2002.
You live in Indiana or Wisconsin now, or farther. Most people who grew up in these parishes have moved.

Parishes and schools covered

Ten of these places are named in the records on this page: Sts. Peter and Paul in Naperville, Immaculate Conception in Elmhurst, St. Joseph in Rockdale, the Cathedral of St. Raymond Nonnatus in Joliet, St. Pius X in Lombard, St. Alexander in Villa Park, Notre Dame in Clarendon Hills, St. Isaac Jogues in Hinsdale, St. Charles Borromeo in Bensenville and St. Mary in Mokena. But the page covers far more than ten. Every parish of the Diocese of Joliet, every parish school and diocesan high school in DuPage, Will, Kankakee, Kendall, Grundy, Ford and Iroquois counties, open now or closed years ago, any year from 1949, when the diocese was created, onward. Before 1949 those same parishes belonged to Chicago, Rockford or Peoria; who answers for those years is a lawyer's problem, not yours. Others are here only because the same diocese ran them, with no separate record cited. Sacred Heart in Lombard, say. St. Jude in New Lenox, Mary Queen of Heaven in Elmhurst, St. Anthony in Frankfort, St. Joseph in Lockport, and the rest of its 117 parishes and their schools. Joliet Catholic High School and Joliet Catholic Academy were run by the Carmelites, and St. Procopius in Lisle by the Benedictines; six of the men on the diocese's list were at Joliet Catholic, and if your years were there, the questions still work, the defendant is a lawyer's call. Yours isn't here? That means nobody has filed yet, or we haven't found it. It does not mean nothing happened. Answer the questions and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue the Diocese of Joliet?

People do. A man filed in Will County this January over abuse he says happened at St. Alexander in Villa Park around 1991, and before him 14 men settled in 2015 and three more in 2018. The cases name the diocese, 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.

What did the Illinois Attorney General say about the Diocese of Joliet?

That 69 clerics and religious brothers had substantiated allegations of abusing children there. That the diocese had admitted, in 2004, to more than 100 credible allegations. That under Bishop Imesch it moved abusers to new parishes "without relaying their history of abuse," and that Imesch said so himself under oath in 2005. And that before his investigation the diocese had disclosed exactly one extern priest, against 13 after it, four still missing when the report came out on May 23, 2023. The diocese answered by adding names to its list.

The priest isn't on the Diocese of Joliet's list, so what now?

It matters less than you'd think. The priest in this January's complaint isn't on it either, or on the Attorney General's list. The diocese's list is its own review board's finding under its own policy, and it says so on the first page. It is a starting point for a lawyer, and not the last word on what happened to you.

Is there still a statute of limitations in Illinois for child sexual abuse?

Not since January 1, 2014, there isn't, as long as your claim was still alive on that day. In practice that means you were born around 1983 or later. If it had lapsed under the older rules, a lawyer needs discovery facts or concealment facts to bring it, which is the whole reason we ask what year you were born.

Has the Diocese of Joliet filed for bankruptcy?

No. Not as of this writing. There is no Chapter 11 case, no claims deadline, no bar date. Its November 2025 audited statements show $61.8 million in net assets and a growing reserve for claims. Dioceses elsewhere have filed when a state opened a revival window and thousands of claims arrived at once; Illinois has no such window, and Joliet's claims come in one at a time. If that ever changes, this page will say so the same day.

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.