ILLINOIS
Spooner Advocate
BY FRANK ZUFALL
No charges, at this time, will be made against former Illinois priest James Steel and Donald Ryniecki, former principal of the St. Joseph Catholic School of Wheeling, Ill., for alleged sexual abuse against Robert Brancato, then a minor, during 1982 and 1983 at a residence owned by Ryniecki on Long Lake in the town of Birchwood.
Brancato, 45, now living in Rapid City, S.D., said he will appeal Frost’s decision to Wisconsin’s attorney general, and if that fails to result in charges against the two Illinois men, he will take his appeal to a federal court.
“I will not allow this to go by the wayside,” said Brancato. “These are habitual offenders who need to be punished, and they need to answer to society for breaking the laws and breaking the souls of children like me.”
Brancato alleges that when he was 12 years old and a student of St. Joseph Catholic School, his principal, Ryniecki, and then-parish priest, Steel, began sexually abusing him at Ryniecki’s summer cottage on Long Lake and continued at the lake in 1983 and at his school in Wheeling. After four suicide attempts Brancato made to end his life because of the alleged abuse as a youth, the last in 2002, he revealed the story of sexual abuse to authorities.
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