If you were an altar server, a student or a kid on the team under Father Daniel McCormack, we believe you.

Father Dan, if you were a kid there. Father McCormack, on paper. Before St. Agatha he was at St. Ailbe, then Holy Family, and from 2000 he was the pastor on Douglas Boulevard, right up until the police came for him at the rectory in January 2006. Then 2007, a Cook County courtroom, and a guilty plea. What the Archdiocese of Chicago knew before that, and when, is written down by the Illinois Attorney General. That is the part a lawyer works with.

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

Looking for the page about the place, not the man? St. Agatha survivors.

This applies to you no matter what

Your name isn't in the plea. Five boys are, and you weren't one of them, and that's fine: by the Illinois Attorney General's count 130 people have reported him, and as late as December 2024 the Archdiocese was still settling St. Agatha claims.
It wasn't St. Agatha for you. Holy Family, maybe, or St. Ailbe. He was at those two between 1994 and 2000, and there's a Cook County complaint, filed in September 2017, that names St. Ailbe specifically.
You were on the basketball team, in algebra class, in the SAFE program, or just hanging around the rectory. The boys in the 2006 charges didn't come from one of those places. They came from all of them.
You told somebody. A nun, a teacher, a coach, your grandmother, and nothing happened. That's the pattern, actually, and it's on paper: a school nun told the Archdiocese in 1999, a grandmother in 2003, the Chicago police in 2005. Not being heard was how this went.
He is out. He did his time, and then twelve more years in a state facility on top of it, and he's been out since October 2021. That changes nothing about a claim against the Archdiocese.
You're asking for a brother, a son, a friend from the team who won't make this call himself. Reach out anyway.

Father Daniel McCormack: what the public record says, and when

None of what follows is ours. It's the Illinois Attorney General, a Cook County judge, the investigators the Archdiocese hired on itself, and the reporters who covered all of it, and every line links to where it came from. Where there's a conviction, we say conviction. Where a claim was settled, we say settled, because a settlement admits nothing. Everything else is an allegation, and we call it that.

Spring 1992 to October 1999

In spring 1992, while he was still a seminarian, three incidents were reported to officials at Saint Mary of the Lake. He was ordained anyway in 1994 and went to St. Ailbe in Calumet Heights, then Holy Family on the Near West Side. In October 1999 the nun who ran Holy Family's school reported that he'd had a fourth-grade boy take his pants down, supposedly to be measured for an altar-server robe. He called it poor judgment. An archdiocesan official's answer, in the Attorney General's words: "If the parents aren't pushing it, let it go." Nobody called the police or DCFS. Illinois Attorney General, McCormack narrative.

2000 to September 5, 2003

Pastor of St. Agatha from 2000, and at the same time a teacher and coach at Our Lady of the West Side school on the parish lot. On September 5, 2003 the Archdiocese was warned about boys in the rectory. The warning went nowhere. BishopAccountability.org, Chicago assignment record.

August 30 to September 2, 2005

Chicago police arrested him on a child's report of sexual abuse and released him without charges. The Cardinal wasn't told until September 2. The restrictions put on him were spoken, not written, and the priest assigned to watch him "was not advised as to the purpose for the monitoring." He kept teaching algebra, kept coaching, took three boys to Minnesota over Labor Day weekend, and on September 1, two days after the arrest, became dean of Deanery III-D. All of that is from the review the Archdiocese itself commissioned from a former FBI investigator. Defenbaugh & Associates review for the Archdiocese, March 20, 2006.

October 2005 to January 20, 2006

The Archdiocese's own review board wrote to Cardinal George recommending he be removed. The Cardinal did not do it. Four boys later said they were abused between that fall and January. On January 20, 2006 he was arrested a second time, charged, and removed from the parish. In March the Cardinal said in public: "I should have found at least some fashion in the canons to remove provisionally Father McCormack. I take responsibility for not doing that." NPR.

July 2, 2007

Cardinal George, the day of the plea: "The sexual abuse of children is a sin and a crime. When the abuser is a priest, the whole church is affected." What he was talking about was this: Daniel McCormack, in the Circuit Court of Cook County, pleading guilty to five counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse against five boys between 8 and 12 years old, from St. Agatha parish and the Our Lady of the Westside school, over the years 2001 to 2005, and being sentenced to five years. The Archdiocese's own newspaper reported it, and said the Archdiocese would move to have him laicized. Catholic New World, Archdiocese of Chicago.

2009 to October 7, 2021

His sentence ran out in 2009. The state kept him anyway, at the Rushville treatment and detention facility, while it asked a court to hold him as a sexually violent person. A Cook County judge found that he was one in 2017. The First District Appellate Court reversed that in May 2021, the Illinois Supreme Court declined the Attorney General's appeal on June 21, and he walked out on October 7, 2021. He registered as a sex offender and lives on the Near North Side. Sun-Times, November 2021.

May 23, 2023

The Illinois Attorney General's report on Catholic clergy abuse listed him with 130 reported survivors, abuse reported in Chicago from 1995 to 2006, and five assignments: St. Ailbe, St. Joseph Seminary, Our Lady of Peace, Holy Family, St. Agatha. It records the Archdiocese's first report as 1999, the 2007 plea to five felony counts, and the 2017 sexually violent person finding. He has been on the Archdiocese's own substantiated list since September 15, 2008. Illinois Attorney General, McCormack entry.

December 11, 2024

The Archdiocese and the Catholic Bishop of Chicago agreed to pay $950,000 to a man who says McCormack abused him in 2004 in the SAFE after-school program at St. Agatha. Back in May 2022 they'd paid $1.2 million to another man, over an after-school program in 2005 when he was 12, and that one never even got to a lawsuit; it settled in mediation first. His lawyer puts her own McCormack settlements at more than $9 million. Settlements, every one, not judgments. CBS Chicago.

We checked this on September 11, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from December 11, 2024. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who answers for what Father McCormack did

Not him, in any way that pays. He has no parish, no salary, no assets a court could reach, and he already did the prison time. Every McCormack case that has actually produced money was brought against the Archdiocese of Chicago, sometimes with the Catholic Bishop of Chicago, the corporation that owns the parishes, named beside it. The theory is short. An institution that ordains a man, makes him pastor, and puts him in front of a grade-school algebra class and a boys' basketball team owes those kids ordinary care. When it's told he is a danger and keeps him there, Illinois calls that negligent retention, and where someone knew and chose anyway, a jury can be asked for more.

What makes his name different from most priest pages is that the knowing isn't a theory. The Archdiocese's own review board recommended his removal on October 15, 2005 and the Cardinal set it aside. The Archdiocese's own hired investigators wrote up the 1999 report, the 2003 call and the 2005 arrest in March 2006. The Attorney General put all of it in a state report in 2023, and counted 104 claims about him that reached the Archdiocese after that first notice in 1999. Those are the facts a complaint pleads, and they've already been pleaded, in Cook County, more than once.

One caveat we'd rather say now than later. Because so many people have come forward about this one man, the Archdiocese looks hard at every new claim, and a lawyer who has handled McCormack cases will want to go through the specifics with you before anything is filed. That's why the first conversation is with a person, not a form.

Your deadline: the Illinois statute of limitations for what happened under Father McCormack

For anyone who was a kid at St. Agatha in his years there, there is no deadline. None. He got to St. Agatha in 2000 and was gone by January 2006, so a kid there was born in the 1980s at the very earliest, and that is the whole reason it's this simple. When Illinois took the clock off childhood sexual abuse claims on January 1, 2014 (that's 735 ILCS 5/13-202.2(f)), the one catch was that a claim already dead under the old rules stayed dead, and no claim from a kid born in the 1980s was anywhere near dead by 2014. So no age test, no closing date.

His earlier parishes are where it gets more careful. St. Ailbe, that's 1994 through 1997. Holy Family, 1998 to 2000. A kid there could have been born before 1983, and for those birth years the 2014 change may or may not apply on age alone. It turns on two things: when you first connected what happened to the harm it did, and what the Archdiocese said, or hid, along the way. Illinois keeps that second door open when an institution kept quiet, and the quiet here is documented.

In plain words. St. Agatha kids: no clock at all. St. Ailbe and Holy Family kids: probably a path, but it turns on facts only you know. Either way, that's a conversation. Not something to guess at off a web page.

Your situation still qualifies even if

It wasn't him but another priest, or a coach, or a volunteer at one of those parishes. The case is against the institution either way.
You have never said it out loud, to anyone, in twenty years.
You liked him. Most of the team did, for a while. That is how it worked, and it doesn't cancel anything.
Somebody already paid you something, years ago, and you signed. Bring the paper; a lawyer needs to read it before anyone says yes or no.
You've got a record now, or a diagnosis, or a life you'd rather not walk a stranger through. None of that touches what the Archdiocese owed you at ten.
You live in Indiana now, or Wisconsin, or downstate. Same page, same call.

Where he was

St. Ailbe in Calumet Heights, 1994 to 1997 · St. Joseph College Seminary at Loyola, 1997 to 2000, where he was director of liturgy and then dean of students · Holy Family on the Near West Side, sacramental minister and then pastor, 1998 to 2000 · Our Lady of Peace, which is on the Archdiocese's list of his ministries without years · St. Agatha, 3147 W. Douglas Blvd in North Lawndale, pastor from 2000 until January 20, 2006, and in the same years algebra teacher and basketball coach at Our Lady of the West Side school on the parish campus, plus the SAFE after-school program · dean of Deanery III-D from September 1, 2005. If your contact with him was somewhere else, tell us anyway.

Questions people are asking

Father Daniel McCormack, who was he?

A Chicago priest. Ordained 1994, and by the end of it pastor of St. Agatha in North Lawndale while also teaching algebra and coaching basketball at the grade school next door. People in the parish called him Father Dan. He was arrested in August 2005, kept in place, arrested again in January 2006, and pleaded guilty in July 2007, at 38. The Archdiocese laicized him that November.

Can I still sue the Archdiocese of Chicago over Father McCormack, this long after?

People have, since 2006, and they still are; the Archdiocese was settling a McCormack claim as recently as December 2024. It hasn't filed for bankruptcy and there's no claims deadline. For anyone who was a kid at St. Agatha between 2000 and 2006, Illinois puts no time limit on the claim. Whether a lawyer takes yours depends on the specifics, which is what the questions above start to sort out.

So was Father McCormack convicted, or only accused?

Convicted, by his own plea, and the whole thing is up in the record section above with the Archdiocese's own newspaper as the source: July 2, 2007, Circuit Court of Cook County, five counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, five boys aged 8 to 12, five years. You may have read about a sixth boy. That one got filed in May 2014 and dropped in February 2016, because the young man decided not to go forward, and it doesn't touch the conviction one way or the other. Five counts. Exactly five.

Is Daniel McCormack still locked up?

No. He got out on October 7, 2021, after the sentence and then twelve more years at Rushville, which is its own story and it's up in the record above. He's on the sex offender registry. Does any of that change a civil claim? No, because the claim is against the Archdiocese, not him.

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. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

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.