More than 450 Catholic clerics and religious brothers abused nearly 2,000 children across six Illinois dioceses, according to a multi-year investigation from the state’s attorney general’s office, a total significantly higher than what the church itself had reported previously.
Sexual Abuse
“At best, the cardinal’s claims of being blindsided are misleading,” Attorney General Kwame Raoul said. “At worst, they are more of the same, a continuation of the church’s decades-long pattern of turning a blind eye and covering up allegations of child sex abuse to the detriment of survivors.”
The results of that investigation, published by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, represents what he called the first comprehensive accounting of child sex abuse by members of the Catholic clergy in Illinois.
“Surviving R. Kelly Part III: The Final Chapter” is a two-part look at the legal fallout Kelly has faced.
R. Kelly’s onetime manager was sentenced Monday to a year in federal prison for calling in a shooting threat that halted a screening of a damning documentary about the R&B star.
R. Kelly’s lawyers said Monday they would fight prosecutors’ bid to tell jurors about allegations beyond the actual charges at his upcoming federal sex trafficking trial.
Federal prosecutors in R. Kelly’s sex trafficking case say he had sexual contact with an underage boy in addition to girls, and the government wants jurors in his upcoming sex trafficking trial to hear those claims.
Two months ahead of his upcoming racketeering trial in New York, R&B star R. Kelly is seeking to part ways with the two Chicago-based attorneys who have been handling his many criminal cases.
After the first allegations surfaced in January, the Archdiocese of Chicago temporarily removed Michael Pfleger to investigate, leading to fierce backlash from parishioners trying to clear his name. They’ve flooded the archdiocese’s phone lines and staged rallies. They’ve also challenged the accusers’ accounts.
The 59-year-old man alleges in an affidavit shared late Tuesday with church officials that the Rev. Michael Pfleger once grabbed his crotch over his clothes in the priest’s bedroom area at St. Sabina Church in the summer of 1979 as the then 18-year-old accuser pretended to sleep.
The Archdiocese of Chicago said Wednesday it plans to publicly list the names of “credibly accused” priests belonging to religious orders after questions over the archdiocese’s transparency.
A federal judge in New York on Tuesday denied R&B singer R. Kelly’s request for release from jail in Chicago because he was concerned he could contract the coronavirus while behind bars.
R&B singer R. Kelly on Thursday pleaded not guilty to an updated federal indictment that includes child pornography charges and allegations involving a new accuser, while prosecutors said more charges alleging yet another victim are upcoming.
Already facing the possibility of three separate trials in 2020, the R&B singer was hit with a new federal indictment this week alleging he engaged in sexual activity with a minor in the late 1990s.
The woman says she was 24 years old and working for R. Kelly when the R&B singer allegedly tried to make her perform oral sex on him in 2003.
The fallout from an explosive story involving a top ally of House Speaker Michael Madigan. Our politics team digs into that story and more in our weekly roundtable.
