CHICAGO (IL)
ChurchMilitant
September 21, 2018
By David Nussman
Fr. Richard McGrath is under investigation for sex abuse
The archdiocese of Chicago failed to inform a preschool and a grade school that a priest accused of child porn and child sex abuse was living nearby.
In 2017, Fr. Richard McGrath was accused of viewing child porn on his cell phone during an event at Providence Catholic High School in the diocese of Joliet outside Chicago. Father McGrath did not cooperate with police, so the investigation made little progress. But a separate allegation surfaced accusing Fr. McGrath of sexually abusing a male student in the 1990s, leading to a lawsuit and an investigation.
Father McGrath was removed from Providence. He then went to live at St. John Stone Friary on Chicago’s South Side, a four-story building run by the Augustinian Order. McGrath is himself an Augustinian priest.
Neither the archdiocese nor the Augustinians informed the Chicago Child Care Society’s preschool next door or St. Thomas the Apostle Grade School around the corner that there was an accused predator in the neighborhood.
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