If you were a kid in the parish under Father Vincent McCaffrey, we believe you.

Five parishes in thirteen years. Calumet City, Hometown, Wheeling, then two in Chicago. He told a federal judge, under oath, what he did to boys in those places, and the Archdiocese's own file shows a pastor writing to headquarters about it in 1980. He wasn't taken out of a parish until November 1991. If your years in one of those parishes line up with his, this is for you.

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Looking for the Archdiocese page? Archdiocese of Chicago survivors.

This applies to you no matter what

He is alive and out of prison. He was released on July 19, 2019, after seventeen years. That changes nothing about a claim against the Archdiocese, which is where these cases have always been brought, and where they've been paid.
His conviction is for child pornography, not for what happened to you. Nobody was ever charged for the abuse itself. And yet he admitted it. Under oath, at his own sentencing, and the federal appeals court that read the transcript afterward called those admissions corroborated. So what kind of man he was isn't something you'd have to prove. That part's done.
You were an altar server, or in the school, or just a kid he took to the racquetball club, the cabin, the rectory. The role doesn't matter. Where and when does.
You told somebody. A parent, the pastor, a nun, a cop in Hometown in 1980. Or you told no one, because he'd told you what would happen if you did. The Attorney General's report says that's exactly how he kept boys quiet. Both stories are on this page's record already.
You're not sure of the year, only the parish. That's enough to start. The years are ours to look up, not yours to remember.
You're asking for a brother, a husband, a friend who was in one of those parishes and can't do this himself. Reach out anyway.

Father Vincent McCaffrey: what the public record says, and when

None of what follows is ours. It's a federal court, a federal appeals court, the Illinois Attorney General, the Archdiocese of Chicago's own list and personnel file, and the reporters who read them. Every line links. One distinction we keep exactly: the only crime McCaffrey was ever convicted of is receiving and possessing child pornography. The abuse of boys in his parishes was never charged. He admitted it under oath, the Archdiocese substantiated it and paid on it, and the word for any claim not yet decided by a court is still allegation.

1980, Our Lady of Loretto, Hometown

A teenage boy and his parents went to the local police about McCaffrey. The pastor then wrote to the Archdiocese's personnel board. He thanked the police for keeping it quiet. He'd told the parish, he said, that McCaffrey was away with alcoholism. And he complained: nobody had warned him, a year earlier, when McCaffrey was transferred in. The Attorney General quotes that letter, which sits in the personnel file the Archdiocese released in January 2014, thirty-four years on. Illinois Attorney General clergy report, p. 144.

November 1987 to 1989

By November 1987 the Archdiocese had him on limited ministry, with restrictions, with monitoring. And then it sent him to St. Josaphat in Lincoln Park anyway. In 1989, after an anonymous report that he was abusing parish boys there, the vicar for priests told Cardinal Bernardin in a memo that McCaffrey was a 'pedophile' and recommended he be moved to another parish. He was moved, to Our Lady of Good Counsel. Illinois Attorney General, Chicago history of claims.

November 1991

Cardinal Bernardin removed McCaffrey from Our Lady of Good Counsel on the South Side, saying he could pose a threat to young people because of past allegations of child sexual abuse. Officials had earlier assured the parish that therapists had cleared him. He said he would resign, and did, in late 1993. Chicago Tribune, November 24, 1991.

June 2002 to February 7, 2003

A New Zealand website's subscriber list led federal agents to him. In his Chicago condo they found child pornography, more than 4,000 images of it. He pleaded guilty, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, to receiving and possessing it. Then, at sentencing, he testified about the boys, and said he'd molested at least fourteen of them as a priest, though an exact count he couldn't give. Judge John Darrah gave him 20 years, which was the statutory maximum, 15 on one count and 5 on the other, and made them run back to back. Daily Herald, February 7, 2003.

July 2003

Four men said McCaffrey abused them at St. Joseph the Worker in Wheeling, from 1977 into the 1980s. The Archdiocese paid them $4 million. That came a week after a separate $1.9 million settlement with another McCaffrey accuser, and its chancellor said that nothing the Archdiocese did could make up for the abuse. Chicago Tribune, July 10, 2003.

February 13, 2006

The Seventh Circuit upheld the 20 years, in United States v. McCaffrey, 437 F.3d 684, No. 03-2189, and what its opinion records is his own testimony. About 100 sexual contacts with twelve to fourteen boys while he was a priest, and hundreds more with perhaps 25 other children. Unprosecuted, the court said, but admitted and corroborated, and for sentencing it treated those acts the same as convictions. Five weeks later the Archdiocese put his name on its first published list of clergy with substantiated allegations. United States v. McCaffrey, 7th Cir. 2006.

May 29, 2007

The Archdiocese announced settlements totalling more than $6.65 million with fourteen people who had sued over twelve priests. One of the fourteen had sued in May 2006. He was 8 to 12, he said, between 1982 and 1986, when McCaffrey abused him at St. Joseph the Worker. And seminary officials, his suit said, had heard McCaffrey call himself a pedophile back in 1976. Chicago Tribune, May 29, 2007.

May 23, 2023

If you read one thing, read this one. In May 2023 the Illinois Attorney General published its clergy report, and McCaffrey's entry counts 17 reported survivors, with the first report to the Archdiocese in 1980 and the abuse running from the 1970s into the early 1990s, in Calumet City, Hometown, Wheeling and Chicago and in Wisconsin and Michigan. The narrative is blunter than the table. Officials of the Archdiocese, it says, knew of his pattern as early as 1979 and declined to remove him. Illinois Attorney General clergy report.

We checked this on September 11, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from May 23, 2023. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who answers for what Father McCaffrey did

Not him, in any way that counts. He's in his seventies, out since 2019, laicized since 2010, and has nothing. The claims that have actually been paid, in 2003 and 2007, were paid by the Archdiocese of Chicago, and that is the defendant in every McCaffrey case anyone has filed. The theory is the ordinary one. The Archdiocese put him in front of children, was told what he was doing, and put him in front of more.

The unusual thing about his file is that it's in writing, and the Archdiocese released it. A pastor's 1980 letter about a police report. A November 1987 entry on the Archdiocese's own list: restrictions and monitoring, followed by two more parish assignments. A 1989 memo to the Cardinal using the word pedophile and recommending a transfer. The Attorney General read all of it and wrote that officials knew as early as 1979. In a lawsuit those documents go to two questions: did the institution know, and did it hide what it knew. A lawyer will tell you what they're worth in your case. You don't have to.

The Archdiocese has never litigated a McCaffrey claim to a verdict. It settled. That is not a promise about yours, and nobody should make you one. It is just the record.

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

Since January 1, 2014, Illinois has had no deadline at all for childhood sexual abuse, under 735 ILCS 5/13-202.2, for any claim that was still alive that day. No clock. That part's real, and it's the first thing a lawyer will check.

The catch is that 2014 didn't reach backward. A claim already dead under the old rules stayed dead. McCaffrey's parishes run 1978 to 1991, so most people reading this were born before 1983, and the born-in-1983-or-later shortcut, where age alone keeps the claim open, applies to only a few of you. For everyone else it turns on two things. First, when you understood that what he did is connected to the harm you carry; Illinois counted the old twenty years from that moment, not from the act, and it stopped the count entirely while you were under threats, manipulation or fraud by the abuser. Second, what the Archdiocese knew and kept quiet, because Illinois has a separate rule for institutions that concealed, and the 1980 letter, the 1987 restrictions and the 1989 memo are exactly what that rule is about.

So where does that leave you? Probably not a simple yes on age. Very possibly a path anyway. Either way it's a conversation with a lawyer who has the file, not a guess off a web page. One more thing, and it's history, not a promise about your case: the men who settled in 2003 and 2007 were abused in the 1970s and 80s. The Archdiocese didn't fight them on the calendar.

Your situation still qualifies even if

It wasn't McCaffrey. Another priest at the same parish, a principal, a coach. The case is against the institution either way, and St. Joseph the Worker in particular has other names in the record.
You have never said it out loud. Most of the men in his file hadn't, for twenty years or more.
You were one of the ones he took places. The cabin in Wisconsin, the racquetball club, a rectory. Out of state doesn't put it out of reach.
He gave you communion, taught your confirmation class, came to your house for dinner. Your parents loved him. Plenty did. It cancels nothing.
Years ago some lawyer told you it was too late. Illinois has changed that law since, in 2014. Ask again.
You live in Indiana now, or Arizona, or anywhere. Where you live doesn't decide the claim; where it happened does.

Where he was

Five parishes, in order. St. Victor in Calumet City, 1978 to 1979. Our Lady of Loretto in Hometown, 1979 to 1981. St. Joseph the Worker in Wheeling, 1981 to 1987. St. Josaphat in Lincoln Park, Chicago, 1987 to mid-1989. Our Lady of Good Counsel on the South Side of Chicago, mid-1989 to November 1991. Before any of that he was a deacon at Our Lady Help of Christians in Chicago, until his ordination in May 1978. The Attorney General's report also puts abuse in Mundelein, in Wisconsin and in Michigan, which fits the trips and the cabin his accusers describe. If your contact with him was somewhere or sometime else, tell us anyway.

Questions people are asking

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 was Father Vincent McCaffrey, exactly?

A Chicago priest. Ordained May 10, 1978, then five parishes in the thirteen years after that, until the Archdiocese pulled him out of the last one in November 1991. His name went onto the Archdiocese's list of clergy with substantiated allegations in March 2006; July 2010, laicized. And in 2023 the Illinois Attorney General's clergy report gave him 17 reported survivors, and said in so many words that the Archdiocese knew what he was by 1979 and moved him anyway.

Why did Vincent McCaffrey go to prison?

Child pornography. Receiving it and possessing it, in federal court in Chicago, and nothing else. That's what agents found in his condo, more than 4,000 images of it, and he pleaded guilty in 2002. In February 2003 Judge John Darrah gave him 20 years, the most the statute allowed. Abusing anyone? Never charged. What he'd done to boys in his parishes came into that courtroom another way, as his own sworn testimony. The judge used it to lengthen the sentence, and the Seventh Circuit, looking at it again in 2006, let all of it stand.

Did the Archdiocese know about him?

Yes, by its own documents, which it released in January 2014. A Hometown pastor wrote to the personnel board in 1980 after a boy's family went to the police. The Archdiocese's list records restrictions and monitoring from November 1987. A 1989 memo to Cardinal Bernardin called him a pedophile and recommended a transfer. He got the transfer. And the Attorney General, having read all of it, put the date officials knew at 1979.

Is there a deadline to sue in Illinois for child sexual abuse?

Not anymore, not since January 1, 2014, if your claim was still alive on that day. Claims that had already run out under the older rules are the exception, and because McCaffrey's parishes were 1978 to 1991, most people on this page fall into that exception on age alone. That's not the end of it. The older rules ran from discovery, paused during threats or manipulation by the abuser, and Illinois has a separate rule for an institution that concealed. Which is why we ask your birth year and whether you ever told anyone.

Will anyone find out I came forward?

Not from us. Your answers go to one person at ME2, a survivor, not a call center. Suits against the Archdiocese are routinely filed under John Doe names, and a lawyer explains how that works before anything is filed. Nothing is filed unless you say so.

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.