ILLINOIS
Patch
By LORRAINE SWANSON (Patch Staff)
April 15, 2015
Savage. Scary. Those are just a few of the words used to describe five Roman Catholic priests named in an out-of-court settlement for $4.137 million by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet.
James Nowak, Michael Gibbney, Lawrence Gibbs, Myles White and Fred Lenczycki were once trusted priests who allegedly preyed upon young boys spanning Will and DuPage County parishes from the 1960s to 1980s. None of the accused priests are today involved in active ministry.
The boys — some of them now men in their sixties — claim that they were abused in school classrooms, private living quarters and a cabin owned by one of the priests’ families.
One of the allegations involved an elaborate ruse in which one boy was tricked into stripping out of his street clothes and donning a loin cloth so that one of the abusers could practice “administering” funeral rites.
The settlement culminates a previous lawsuit filed by four men in Will County Circuit Court. Their suits alleged that Diocese of Joliet allowed known or suspected predators and pedophiles to meet with young boys at remote or private locations outside the presence of other adults.
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