CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — There are plans to put up billboards in Chicago asking alleged victims of a notorious predator priest to come forward in an effort to keep him locked up for the rest of his life.
“We gotta get this guy and keep him behind bars,” Jeff Anderson, an attorney whose Minnesota firm has represented thousands of sexual abuse survivors, told WBBM Newsradio.
Anderson alleged there may be over 100 children who were sexually abused by sexual predator and former Chicago Catholic priest Daniel McCormack.
“We do know that he’s already sentenced scores, if not hundreds of kids, to a lifetime of suffering and we have to do everything today to prevent that from happening to others,” he said.
Anderson said he plans to display the billboards in neighborhoods where McCormack once served in Chicago. The billboards will “urge people to come forward with evidence so that this guy can be prosecuted and continue to be incarcerated and kids protected.”
A state appeals court said prosecutors haven’t proven McCormack would molest again and that McCormack should be freed. McCormack completed his sentence in 2009.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has planned an appeal to the state Supreme Court.
“If released from prison, how many more would he, thus, have access to?” Anderson questioned.
One alleged victim, identified at a news conference only as “JD,” said McCormack, as a priest who was supposed to be somebody trustworthy, did the “unspeakable” to him and that he should remain locked up.
Another alleged victim, identified as Tariq, said McCormack abused him when he was in the second and third grades.
“That type of stuff, it makes you question your own faith. It make you don’t really want to go to church,” Tariq said.
David Clohessy, former co-director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said Cardinal Blase Cupich should use his “tremendous resources to beat the bushes for others to come forward.”
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