John Bacon

USA TODAY

More than 6%2C000 pages of documents were posted online

Victims%27 lawyers say they show the archdiocese concealed abuse for decades

Many of the accused priests are now dead

A paper trail of sexual misconduct involving 30 priests and the Archdiocese of Chicago's slow and clumsy handling of the cases is revealed in thousands of pages of documents released online Tuesday.

Most of the misconduct took place decades ago -- and most of the Roman Catholic priests involved were never criminally prosecuted. Victims' lawyers, who released the documents, had pressed for public access to the records to show that the archdiocese concealed abuse for decades, including moving priests to new parishes where they molested again.

Lawyer Chris Hurley, whose firm represents more than a dozen people pressing abuse suits against the archdiocese, said accusations against the priests were well known before the documents' release.

"What the archdiocese had not let us know about is how much they knew all along," Hurley said.

Meeting schedules, accusatory letters from parishioners and discussions of their claims are included in the release. The documents describe how past archbishops, including Cardinal John Cody and Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, often approved the reassignments.

In one case, the Rev. Vincent McCaffery was allowed by Bernardin and Cody to relocate to other parishes after allegations of abuse. McCaffrey, who said he received treatment as early as 1980, was sentenced in 2003 to 15 years in prison for obtaining and possessing child pornography. At his trial, McCaffrey admitted to abusing dozens of kids.

Some of the allegations came to light under Cardinal Francis George, archbishop since 1997. Rev. Daniel McCormack, a teacher and basketball coach at Our Lady of the Westside, confessed in 2007 to sexually abusing five boys. He was sentenced to five years in prison. The next year, the archdiocese agreed to pay $12.6 million to 16 victims of sexual abuse by priests, including McCormack.

"Painful though publicly reviewing the past can be, it is part of the accountability and transparency to which the archdiocese is committed," George said in a letter last week announcing the release.

However, files on McCormack were not released; they have been sealed by a judge because of pending court cases. The church released documents involving less than half of the 65 priests it has acknowledged faced substantiated abuse claims.

"They have hand-picked 30 priests, but if they really are all about redemption and forgiveness they should release documents involving all the priests," Hurley said.

The disclosures were similar to those made in other dioceses in recent years that showed how the Roman Catholic Church shielded priests and failed for many years to report child sex abuse to authorities.

Timothy Lytton, professor at Albany Law School in New York and author of the book Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits Helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sexual Abuse, said the issue for the church remains accountability.

"Its not whether the claims were true, because the church has acknowledged all along that almost all the allegations are true," Lytton said. "The issue is what church officials did to figure out what was true and what was false. What the victims want is accountability."

George, in his letter, said that is what the church is trying to provide.

"Telling the truth does not create an excuse for failure," he said. "But it makes a difference, as we go forward, to know in what the failure consists, to know that the truth has been told and that the Church is committed to accountability and transparency."

Contributing: Associated Press