If you were a kid in the parish under Father William Cloutier, in Oak Forest or Skokie or anywhere between, we believe you.

June 1979. Two 13-year-olds from St. Damian in Oak Forest told their parents, the parents went to the police, and the police told the Archdiocese. Nobody was charged. He was sent away for six months, then brought back, and by 1985 he had a parish with a school again, in Skokie. He stayed there until somebody sued in 1991. The Attorney General now counts 23 people who have reported him.

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Looking for the Archdiocese page? Archdiocese of Chicago survivors.

This applies to you no matter what

He is dead. He died in August 2003, at 54, ten years after he quit the priesthood. That closes nothing. The people already paid were paid by the Archdiocese of Chicago, and it is still at 835 North Rush Street.
He was never charged. A Cook County prosecutor said in 2002 that the criminal clock had run out. A civil case doesn't need a charge; it needs what the Archdiocese knew, and that part is on paper.
It was a youth meeting, a trip to the cottage, a ride home. The 1991 complaint describes exactly that, alcohol first. Whatever it felt like then, a court asks only what happened and how old you were.
You told someone. A CCD teacher, the pastor, the police. At St. Damian in 1979, kids did all three, and he went on to two more parishes. Say so on the call; it's the part that matters most.
The memory came back years later, or it's still in pieces. That's what the man who came forward in 2002 said too, and Cloutier himself, for that matter.
You are asking for a brother, a husband, an old friend from Oak Forest or Skokie who can't make this call himself. Reach out anyway.

Father William Cloutier: what the public record says, and when

None of this is ours. It's the Illinois Attorney General, the Archdiocese of Chicago's own list and its own personnel file, a complaint filed in Cook County, and the reporters who covered it, and every line links to its source. Cloutier was never charged with a crime. He admitted, in print, to three teenagers in 1979; everything else on this page is an allegation or a list's finding, and we call it that.

May 14, 1975 to June 1979

Ordained, then St. Frances Xavier Cabrini in Chicago and, from 1977, St. Damian in Oak Forest. A Vicar for Priests memo from 1989, released by the Archdiocese in 2014, lays out June 1979 day by day: June 8, a boy tells the pastor, Msgr. Martin O'Day, about "some sort of relations" with Cloutier; June 9, O'Day confronts him; June 10, Cloutier takes two other boys to his cottage in Putnam County, and their parents go to the police and sign a complaint. The memo adds that the school at Cabrini had already considered him "dangerous around children" and kept him out. Archdiocese of Chicago personnel file, released January 21, 2014.

June 1979 to 1985

No charges. The Archdiocese sent him east instead, to the House of Affirmation in Whitinsville, Massachusetts, six months of it, and he stuck around near Worcester afterward helping out at parishes there. Home by 1981, to Our Lady of the Snows. From 1982 he was a chaplain at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and then, 1985, St. Peter in Skokie, school attached. He said later (Sun-Times, 2002) that he'd asked Cardinal Bernardin not to send him back to a parish at all. Nobody remembered him saying so, the Archdiocese said. Sun-Times, October 4, 2002.

August 14, 1991 to November 1991

A man who had been 13 in 1979 filed a complaint in the Circuit Court of Cook County against the Catholic Bishop of Chicago, Cloutier and Msgr. O'Day. It alleges that Cloutier gave two 13-year-olds alcohol and marijuana at the cottage, sexually abused them and threatened both with a handgun; that Oak Forest police took the parents' complaints on June 11, 1979 and told the Archdiocese; and that O'Day then told the parents Cloutier would be sent for treatment and that the best course was to help the boy forget it. On September 14 and 15 the pastor of St. Peter read a statement at the Masses: administrative leave, nothing recent, the suit "contains many misstatements of fact." The Archdiocese's list dates his removal to November 1991. Complaint and parish statement, Archdiocese of Chicago personnel file.

October 12, 1991

The Tribune had it on October 12: a suit filed August 14 in Cook County Circuit Court by attorney Jeffrey Anderson, over the 1979 abuse of a boy who was 13. The Archdiocese told the paper Cloutier had been pastor of St. Damian, then came back and said, no, associate pastor. Chicago Tribune, October 12, 1991.

July 20, 1993

The Archdiocese's list marks him "Monitored 1987." Then "Removed from Public Ministry 11/1991." Then "Resigned 7/1993," and behind that last line there's two years at the Archdiocese's retreat house at Mundelein, followed by a letter resigning from active ministry, one paragraph, which Cardinal Bernardin accepted on July 28. Archdiocese of Chicago, list of clergy with substantiated allegations.

October 4, 2002

Cloutier was 53 and living in Skokie in 2002 when a 29-year-old from Berwyn, an altar server at St. Peter back in the mid-1980s, said Cloutier had abused him there, at least three times. Cloutier answered him by e-mail, and then he talked to two newspapers. He admitted to three teenagers in 1979, said of Skokie that he didn't remember but "it's entirely possible," and said of the Archdiocese: "I got away with murder." A Cook County prosecutor said the criminal deadline had run. Daily Herald, October 4, 2002.

October 2, 2003, and October 27, 2005

Cloutier died August 25, 2003. He'd been dead five weeks when the Archdiocese announced it was settling with 15 people over 11 priests, him among them, for slightly more than $8 million, the shares running anywhere from $200,000 to $1.7 million. That closed out a 19-client mediation; about $12 million went out that year, all told. In October 2005 it settled with 24 more people over 14 priests, Cloutier again named. No total was disclosed. Chicago Tribune, October 3, 2003.

May 23, 2023

The Illinois Attorney General's report lists William J. Cloutier with 23 reported survivors and abuse reported in Chicago, Oak Forest, Putnam County and Skokie, the Skokie entries dated 1985 to 1987. First report, by the Archdiocese's own account: 1979. On the Archdiocese's public list since March 20, 2006. Illinois Attorney General, Cloutier entry.

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 Cloutier is accused of

Not him. He has been dead since 2003, and Illinois doesn't let a claim for punishment follow a man into the grave. The people who have been paid were paid by the Archdiocese of Chicago, the Catholic Bishop of Chicago on paper, which ordained him, assigned him, and was the defendant in the 1991 suit alongside him. The theory is the one every one of these cases runs on. An employer that is told its employee has hurt children, and answers by giving him more children, answers for what happens next.

What makes this one unusual is how much of the telling is in the Archdiocese's own hand. Police at the door in June 1979; a pastor who, the complaint says, told the parents to help their son forget it. A 1989 memo from the Vicar for Priests reconstructing that week, and adding that the school at his first parish had already refused to let him in. A 1985 assignment to a parish with a school, which Cloutier himself said he'd argued against. Then "Monitored 1987," on the Archdiocese's own list, four years before it removed him. And a nun from the Newman Center who told the Archdiocese in 2005 that she had "begged" two priests to do something about him back then, and nobody would. None of that leaked. The Archdiocese released the file itself, on January 21, 2014.

One more thing, plainly. Cloutier was never on trial and never convicted of anything. What he did admit, in 2002, he admitted to two newspapers. A lawyer will know how that admission, the file and the two lists fit together. You don't have to.

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

For the youngest kids at St. Peter, there may be no deadline at all. On January 1, 2014 Illinois took the statute of limitations off childhood sexual abuse claims, under 735 ILCS 5/13-202.2, and hasn't put it back. If your claim was still alive that day, you can file now. This year, or in five.

Here's the catch, and it's why the questions ask your birth year. The 2014 law didn't reach backward; claims that had already run out under the old rules stayed run out, and the Illinois courts have said so. Roughly: born in 1983 or later, and you can file on age alone. Born earlier, which is most of the people who knew him in Oak Forest, at Our Lady of the Snows or in Skokie in the 1980s, and it turns on two things a lawyer will ask about. When you first understood that what happened is connected to the harm you carry now. And what the Archdiocese knew and kept quiet, because Illinois pauses the clock while an institution is concealing. Here, what it knew in 1979 is in its own memos, which most survivors can't say about their case.

The honest answer, then. No clock for a few. A real path for many. And which one you are is something a conversation can tell you and a web page can't.

Your situation still qualifies even if

It wasn't Cloutier. A different priest, a teacher, a coach at the same parish. The claim is against the institution either way.
You never said it out loud. Not to a spouse, not to a friend, not to anyone, and you're not sure you can. Nobody on the first call will push.
You liked him. He was Father Bill, he ran the youth group, he fixed the parish computers. Plenty of kids liked him, and that cancels nothing.
Some lawyer told you, years ago, that it was too late. Maybe it was, then. Illinois rewrote the law in 2014, so ask again.
You live in Indiana or Wisconsin or somewhere farther now, like most people from those parishes, honestly.

Where he was

Five parishes and a campus, in order, starting with St. Frances Xavier Cabrini in Chicago, 1975 to 1977, and St. Damian in Oak Forest, where he was from 1977 until the summer of 1979 (the cottage he kept downstate in Putnam County goes with those years; it's the one in the 1991 complaint). Then Massachusetts for treatment and a stretch around Worcester. Our Lady of the Snows at 4810 South Leamington, 1981 to 1982. The University of Illinois at Chicago, 1982 to 1985, chaplain at the Pope John Paul II Catholic Student Center and, the record says, at Columbia College, a YMCA and Loop Junior College. St. Peter in Skokie, 1985 until September 1991, and the retreat house at Mundelein after that, until 1993. One more, and it's earlier than all of these: a man told the Archdiocese in 2005 that for him it began at the Mundelein seminary, 1966 or 1967, years before Cloutier was even ordained. Somewhere not on this list? A trip, a retreat, a friend's house. Tell us anyway.

Questions people are asking

Who was Father William Cloutier?

A Chicago priest, ordained in May 1975, who went through five assignments in sixteen years, St. Frances Cabrini to St. Peter in Skokie, with a six-month stop in a Massachusetts treatment center in the middle. Kids knew him as Father Bill. He was put on leave in September 1991, once the lawsuit was filed, and resigned in July 1993. He died in Skokie in August 2003. He was 54.

Can I still sue if Father Cloutier is dead?

Yes, because the case was never really against him. The 1991 suit named the Catholic Bishop of Chicago first. The 2003 and 2005 settlements were the Archdiocese's money. The Archdiocese hasn't gone into bankruptcy, there's no claims deadline, and it's still settling clergy claims one at a time, nine of them this September.

Did Father Cloutier ever get charged, or convicted of anything?

No. Not in 1979, when two sets of parents walked into the Oak Forest police station and the police took their complaints (dropped, the 1991 complaint says). He was looked at again in the 1990s. Nothing came of that either, and by 2002 a Cook County prosecutor was telling the Daily Herald that the criminal deadline had passed, full stop. So this page never calls him convicted. He's on two lists, and he admitted three incidents from 1979 in print. That is the record, exactly.

Did the Archdiocese of Chicago know about Father Cloutier?

In 1979 it did, by its own file. A boy told the pastor on June 8. The police had complaints by June 11. The Archdiocese sent him to treatment and, a year and a half later, back to a parish; in 1985 to another one with a school; and its own list says it was monitoring him from 1987. It removed him in 1991, after the lawsuit. Whether that adds up to liability in your case is a lawyer's call. The paper is public.

What about the Illinois statute of limitations for child sexual abuse?

For most people there isn't one anymore. Illinois took it off on January 1, 2014, for claims that were still alive on that date. Claims that had already lapsed under the older rules are the exception, and those turn on when you first understood the harm and on what the Archdiocese concealed. That's why we ask whether you were born in 1983 or later, and whether you ever told anyone.

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.

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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.