This is not a government report; it's written by (IIRC) a law firm which has made good money chasing after clerical abusers.
Not all of the allegations are credible or substantiated.
Not all of the alleged perps are still alive.
Some of them served in Illinois only briefly or incidentally -- most of their career was elsewhere, IOW -- and the accusations of abuse did not necessarily happen while they were serving in Illinois. (This means that they could be counted as "sexually abusive priests" multiple times in different states.)
It appears to include abusers who were removed from the priesthood on account of their abuse.
It's bad, but it's played up to be even worse than what it is.
Agreed. They included every claim they could which is somewhat puzzling. What is their motive for the ones where the alleged abuser is dead? At first I thought it may have been actioned by the state in order to remove tax exempt status. But many of the claims will probably not make it to trial so what are they (law firm) doing? You can’t bring other allegations to support a particular specific case that is not related. Unless some of Muellers buddies are joining in on another witch hunt.
OTOH, there are likely some who never got caught, so it balances out.
And the fact that some may be dead does not make the allegations not credible or substantiated.
And likely they served only briefly cause word of what they were doing got out and they were protected by being moved around, which is the real atrocity in the whole issue.
Somehow Catholics keep focusing on only the numbers, trying to downplay the seriousness of what happened and making if sound like it wasn’t so bad. What the bigger problem is as it it could be, is the protection the Catholic hierarchy gave those priests it kept hearing reports about.
We keep telling you all Catholics that and somehow it keeps falling on deaf ears.
They could be sued for putting out false claims.