ILLINOIS
Daily Herald
By Jamie Sotonoff
Father Vince McCaffrey had a history of predatory abuse when he arrived at St. Joseph the Worker Church in Wheeling in the 1980s. Catholic church leaders knew it; parishioners did not.
He was assigned to four parishes in the Chicago area over the years, abusing as many as 100 children before being jailed for child pornography possession. While McCaffrey was in Wheeling, the 10-year-old son of Jim and Kathy Laarveld became one of his victims.
“It even happened on his first communion, in my own house, while we were taking family photos and he was sitting on (McCaffrey’s) lap. He was a professional,” Kathy Laarveld said of the priest.
The Laarvelds were among the victims and family members who spoke, sometimes tearfully, during a news conference Tuesday in Chicago, where, as part of a court settlement, the Archdiocese of Chicago released more than 6,000 pages of internal communications about 30 of its 65 priests accused of sexually abusing children.
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