What happened to you at St. Bede was not okay.

St. Bede the Venerable, at 83rd and Kostner in Ashburn. The church, the rectory, the school on the block. If you were a kid there from the late 1970s into the early 1980s, or in the parish's first years, and something happened that you have never quite put down, then yes. This is about you. One priest from those years went to prison in Wisconsin. In 2021 the Archdiocese paid two St. Bede altar boys, now grown men, without a single day in court.

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

Looking for the page about the man, not the place? Father Norbert Maday.

This applies to you no matter what

You weren't one of the boys in the Wisconsin case. Almost nobody was. Those two were from his next parish, not St. Bede. The men the Archdiocese paid in 2021 were St. Bede altar boys who never went to trial at all.
It was forty-some years ago. We know. The two Cook County suits out of St. Bede, one filed in 2015 and one in 2016, were about things done between 1979 and 1982, and in June 2021 the Archdiocese settled with two St. Bede men anyway. Old isn't over. Not the same thing.
You never told a soul. Or you told a sister at the school, or your mother, and it went nowhere. And the Archdiocese's own file on this priest doesn't even open until 1990, seven years after he'd left St. Bede, so no, nobody wrote your name down. That is part of the case, not a hole in it.
It wasn't Father Maday. A priest sent to St. Bede straight out of the seminary in 1957 is also on the Attorney General's 2023 list, with 40 reported survivors. And the page is about the place either way.
You've got a record now, or a diagnosis, or years you'd rather not walk a stranger through. None of that changes what a parish owed a ten-year-old in its sacristy.
You're a brother, a wife, a grown daughter asking for someone who won't make the call himself. Reach out anyway. More people do that than you'd think.

St. Bede the Venerable: what the public record says, and when

None of what's below is ours. It comes from a Wisconsin appeals court, the Archdiocese of Chicago's own personnel files, the Illinois Attorney General, two Cook County complaints and the reporters who covered them, and every line links to its source. We don't add to it. A conviction is called a conviction. A claim the Archdiocese paid to settle is called that, because a settlement is not an admission. A list is named as whose list it is.

1957 to 1961

John William Curran's first assignment, fresh from ordination in 1957, was St. Bede the Venerable, a parish then only four years old. He appears in the Illinois Attorney General's 2023 report with 40 reported survivors. That report puts the Archdiocese's first report about him at 1990; he was removed from ministry in 1994, died in 2000, and on March 20, 2006 the Archdiocese put him on its own list. None of the report's conduct dates fall in his St. Bede years, and we claim nothing from them. Illinois Attorney General, Curran entry.

June 8, 1977 to June 20, 1983

Six years as associate pastor at St. Bede the Venerable. That was Norbert J. Maday, ordained in 1964, and St. Bede was parish number four of his six. Before it, going by the Archdiocese's own personnel-file timeline (released 2014): St. John of God, St. Leo, and St. Louis de Montfort in Oak Lawn. After it, Our Lady of the Ridge in Chicago Ridge, then St. Jude the Apostle in South Holland. Archdiocese personnel-file timeline, released January 2014 (via Jeff Anderson & Associates).

July 1990 and March 1992

The first note in the Archdiocese's file is a July 1990 memo from a priest at St. Jude the Apostle, reporting a possible abuse from about two years earlier and his own misgivings about Maday's behavior with boys. Seven years after St. Bede. Nothing in the file shows that memo went to the police. Then March 1992. A report about him got to the Illinois State Police, who looked into it, and before the month was out the Archdiocese had pulled him from ministry. National Catholic Reporter, on the released files.

June 8, 1994

Winnebago County, Wisconsin, the Circuit Court there. Three counts of second-degree sexual assault and one of intimidation of a victim, that was the conviction. The boys were 12 and 14. Spring of 1986, the rectory of the Chicago church he was living at by then, for one assault; the other came that June or July at a retreat facility up in Oshkosh. Nobody reported either one until 1992. The sentence ran to two ten-year terms back to back, a third ten years alongside them, and five years stayed on the intimidation count. He appealed, and the Court of Appeals let it stand, March 13, 1996, No. 95-0744-CR. And the two boys? Altar servers at Our Lady of the Ridge, where he went after St. Bede. State v. Maday, Wisconsin Court of Appeals, No. 95-0744-CR.

January 21, 2014

The Archdiocese released more than 6,000 pages of files on 30 priests, Maday among them. His show Cardinal Bernardin declining in 1996 to seek his dismissal from the priesthood ("You have suffered enough"), and Cardinal George writing him on March 6, 2000 that efforts were under way "to have a sentence reduction." The review board recommended laicization in May 2003; Maday was laicized in December 2007. The Archdiocese's statement with the release spoke of decisions "decades ago that are now difficult to justify." National Catholic Reporter, January 23, 2014.

June 8, 2015 and June 2016

Two St. Bede altar boys, now men, sued the Catholic Bishop of Chicago and the Archdiocese in the Circuit Court of Cook County. The first is John Doe v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, No. 15-L-5786. A fifth-grader and altar server, he says, when it began in 1979, and it ran to 1982: the sacristy, the rectory bedroom, Maday's car. Negligence, wilful and wanton misconduct, battery, those are the counts. And one line that matters here, that before 1992 the Archdiocese never once warned priests, staff or parents that Maday should not be alone with children. The second suit came a year later. He was 10, it says, in 1979, at St. Bede, 8200 S. Kostner, and the complaint's charge is that the Archdiocese failed to investigate reports about Maday or to supervise him. Both are complaints; both allege. Cook County Record, on No. 15-L-5786.

June 23, 2021

$880,000. That is what the Archdiocese of Chicago agreed to pay two men who said Maday abused them, starting when they were 10, while they were altar boys and students at St. Bede the Venerable school. The Associated Press reported the deal was reached before a suit was filed. The same story records Cardinal George writing Maday in 2000 that it would be "a great fulfillment of the millennium spirit to see your captive heart set free," another man coming forward in 2002, and George writing Wisconsin's parole commission in 2007 that he had removed Maday from the priesthood "for the protection of the vulnerable." Maday had died in March 2019; the money came from the institution. Associated Press, via Court TV.

May 23, 2023

Maday's entry in the Illinois Attorney General's report on Catholic clergy abuse: 72 reported survivors. Six Illinois assignments, St. Bede the Venerable one of them. Chicago conduct dates 1971 to 1985, and the 1994 Wisconsin conviction noted. His status there reads laicized 2007, deceased 2019. Illinois Attorney General, Maday 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 can be held responsible in a St. Bede lawsuit

Not the man. He died in 2019 and had nothing before that. Every St. Bede claim that has been filed or paid was brought against the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Catholic Bishop of Chicago, the corporation that holds the parish and the school. The theory is short. An institution that puts a priest in a parish with a grade school and a room full of altar servers owes those kids ordinary care: watch him, look into what people say about him, tell someone when there is something to tell. The 2015 St. Bede complaint says it plainly: no reasonably sufficient procedures to keep priests from being alone with children, and no warning to anyone. That is negligent supervision, and where an institution knew and chose, Illinois lets a claim go further.

What the record shows about knowing, and we won't stretch it. The Archdiocese's file on Maday starts in July 1990. It shows the State Police and a mother reporting him in March 1992, his removal that month, then Cardinal Bernardin declining to pursue his dismissal in 1996 and Cardinal George lobbying for his early release in 2000. What the file does not show is a written complaint during his St. Bede years, and we don't claim one. That is why the St. Bede suits pleaded missing procedures rather than an ignored report, and why what you remember, who you told and what was said matters more here than on most pages.

One more thing. Two St. Bede altar boys were paid in 2021 for abuse that began in 1979, without a trial, two years after the man died. The Archdiocese is not in bankruptcy and there is no claims deadline. That is the honest state of things.

Your deadline: the Illinois statute of limitations for what happened at St. Bede

Illinois took the deadline off in 2014, and for St. Bede the catch matters, so read this part. There has been no statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse in Illinois since January 1, 2014, when 735 ILCS 5/13-202.2(f) took effect, but, and here's the catch, it only covers claims that were still alive on that day. The old rule was twenty years from your 18th birthday. Nearly every kid at St. Bede in Maday's years, 1977 to 1983, was born before 1983, many in the 1960s. On age alone, most of those clocks had run before 2014. That is the plain truth and we'd rather you hear it from us.

Here is the other path, and it is real. Under subsection (b) of the same statute, the twenty years can start not at 18 but on the day you discovered two things: that the abuse happened, and that it caused the harm you carry. Subsection (d-1) does something else. It stops the clock for any stretch when you were under threats, manipulation or fraud, by the abuser or by anyone acting for him. Now look at the dates. The 2015 suit, 1979. The 2016 suit, 1979 again. The two men the Archdiocese paid in 2021, those same years. So this is not theory. It is how St. Bede claims have actually been brought.

In plain words. Born in 1983 or later: you're on age alone and there is no clock. Born earlier, which is most of St. Bede: it turns on when you first connected what happened to what it did to you, and on what the Archdiocese said or didn't say along the way. Those are facts only you have, and a lawyer decides, not this page. It takes a conversation, not a guess.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You told a sister, a teacher, your parents, a priest. Or you told nobody.
It wasn't a priest, it was a teacher, or a coach, the scout leader, some volunteer. The case is against the institution either way.
You still go to Mass there, or your mother does. St. Bede is open, joined now with St. Denis, and this has nothing to do with the people in the pews.
You liked him. Plenty of St. Bede kids did. It doesn't cancel anything.
You were born sometime in the 1960s and you've done the math. Read the deadline section, then ask anyway. The 2021 settlement was for men born around then.
You live in Indiana now, or Wisconsin, or Oak Lawn. Same page, same call.

Facilities covered

St. Bede the Venerable church and rectory at 8200 S. Kostner Ave, Chicago 60652 · St. Bede the Venerable School at 4440 W. 83rd St., opened in 1955 by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, 1,635 pupils in 1961, lay-run since 1996 and still open · the altar servers, the scout troop, the parish trips of those years. The parish is now St. Bede-St. Denis Parish, with Mass still said at St. Bede. Was it one of Maday's other parishes instead, St. John of God, St. Leo, St. Louis de Montfort, Our Lady of the Ridge or St. Jude the Apostle? The questions still work. Answer them and say where on the call.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue St. Bede church for what happened there?

In practice you sue the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Catholic Bishop of Chicago, which own St. Bede and assigned its priests. Two St. Bede altar boys did that in Cook County in 2015 and 2016, and the Archdiocese paid two St. Bede men $880,000 in June 2021. Whether a lawyer takes your claim depends on what happened and when, which is what the questions above sort out.

Hasn't the Illinois deadline run out on something from the 1970s?

Maybe. Maybe not. Illinois has had no statute of limitations at all since January 1, 2014, but only for claims that were still alive on that day, and on age alone most St. Bede kids from the 1970s and early 1980s were already out of time by then. What's left rides on two things: when you discovered the harm, and whether threats or concealment stopped the clock along the way. Claims from those exact years have been filed and settled. A lawyer works that out with you; it is not a form question.

Was the St. Bede priest convicted?

Yes, in Wisconsin. Norbert Maday was convicted in Winnebago County on June 8, 1994 of three counts of second-degree sexual assault and one count of intimidation of a victim, for two boys, 12 and 14, in 1986. Twenty years, affirmed on appeal in 1996. Those boys were from Our Lady of the Ridge, his parish after St. Bede. Over St. Bede itself, nobody has ever been criminally charged. The St. Bede claims were civil ones.

Father Maday is dead. Can I still bring a claim?

Yes. The claims are against the Archdiocese, not his estate, and the Archdiocese paid two St. Bede men in 2021, two years after he died. Illinois does not let a punitive claim follow a dead man, so anything a lawyer files is about what the institution did.

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.