Day 2 of hearings on ex-priest who molested boys wraps up

CHICAGO (IL)
WGN 9

September 7, 2017

By Mike Lowe

Chicago – The trial of disgraced Catholic priest Daniel McCormck has wrapped up a second day of testimony.

A judge will decide if the notorious ex-priest is a “sexually dangerous person” who can be held indefinitely – despite having served his time for a criminal conviction.

In a day of mostly procedural testimony, an expert witness told a judge that he did not see McCormack as a threat to offend again. It was a direct contradiction to what an expert told him the day before. It’s the latest legal chapter in a case that has bedeviled the archdiocese for years.

For a decade, McCormack served in Chicago’s archdiocese, a priest at St. Agatha’s parish on the west side.

In 2007, he pleaded guilty to molesting five boys.

He was sentenced to five years in prison and was paroled in 2009, but has been held in a downstate medical facility ever since.

Now the question before a Cook County judge is – should an admitted pedophile who has served his sentence be released from medical custody?

“I know the history of Daniel McCormack, and I know it from the time he entered the seminary through his time in prison and based on what I know, I beloved there is a substantial risk that he could re-offend,” said attorney Marc Pearlman.

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