On March 24, 2025, a lawsuit was filed by the Archdiocese of Chicago. The civil filing in the Circuit Court of Cook County seeks injunctive relief and damages against a web of 10 connected unnamed defendants that the Archdiocese alleges perpetrated a “wide-ranging racketeering scheme designed to profit from more than a dozen fraudulent claims of priest sexual abuse” (Statement on Counterclaim Filing by the Archdiocese of Chicago).
The circuit court filing alleges that this group of individuals, some of whom the lawsuit names as known gang members as well as a convicted murderer, concocted a scheme to fraudulently allege they had been sexually abused by Archdiocese of Chicago Priest, Daniel McCormack. McCormack plead guilty to sexually abusing children in 2007.
The Archdiocese asserts in its lawsuit that the defendants took advantage of the “pastoral response to compensate real victims of priest sexual abuse” by creating scripts, counseling each other on what to say such as how to embellish, and how to reach attorneys to pursue a settlement (Statement on Counterclaim Filing by the Archdiocese of Chicago). Within the pages of the lawsuit, the Archdiocese introduces alleged jail-house conversations that expose the defendants sharing tips and response prompts with each other to best make their fraudulent claims about McCormack.
The complaint states that a conversation between two cousins over a state-prison telephone line revealed aspects of a scheme as one defendant stated, “I got to get on the money train, man.” Another defendant stated, “Yeah, I need some free [expletive] money, too. As long as [expletive] ain’t [sic] touch me for real”(Archdiocese of Chicago Suing Group It Says Made False Claims of Sexual Abuse for Financial Settlements)(Chicago Archdiocese sues 10 it says were not really abused by former St. Agatha Church priest).
This is not the first time that the Archdiocese of Chicago has brought a countersuit against an alleged false accuser. The Archdiocese won their filing against an individual who had made a bogus abuse allegation against McCormack in 2017.
In their statement, the Archdiocese of Chicago emphasizes that they were forced to take this action to stand for true survivors of sexual abuse. General Counsel for the Archdiocese, James Geoly, stated, “Our attention is directed towards survivors, not fraudsters seeking to gain financially from others’ pain and suffering.”
The attorneys at Airdo Werwas, LLC, are closely following this lawsuit. If you have any questions about the legal implications of this case or other matters related to religious institutions and litigation, please contact Michael A. Airdo at mairdo@airdowerwas.com or Michael P. Jekot at mjekot@airdowerwas.com