ROCKFORD (IL)
Northwest Herald
November 19, 2018
By Katie Smith
The Catholic Diocese of Rockford has released the names of 15 priests accused of sexual abuse, including at least three of whom previously were assigned to churches in McHenry County.
Although the diocese previously reported some of the 15 priests named in the report, which was released Wednesday, others were not disclosed until the diocese reviewed the claims while compiling the list, according to a statement from Rockford Bishop David Malloy.
A statement attached to the release did not include details about the specific allegations, dates when church officials learned about the alleged abuse or how the claims were substantiated. A diocese spokesperson could not be reached for comment.
Three of the named men – Mark A. Campobello, John C. Holdren and William I. Joffe – each were priests in McHenry County at one point.
In 2000, Campobello was assigned to St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Crystal Lake as a priest, but he served the parish for less than a year. He pleaded guilty in 2004 to abusing two teenage girls he taught at Aurora Central Catholic High School while serving as a priest in Geneva and received a four-year prison sentence. Campobello was removed from the ministry in December 2002, and he was stripped of his religious status in 2005, according to the release.
In 2004, the Catholic Diocese of Rockford announced that it received sexual misconduct allegations against Joffe, who had been a pastor in Woodstock, Cary and Harvard. Joffe was removed from the ministry in August 1993 and died in April 2008.
Most recently, Holdren was accused in 2015 of sexually abusing a 7- to 9-year-old child while assigned to an Aurora church. He retired in 1994 from St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Johnsburg, where he spent 10 years as a priest. He also spent six years in the 1970s at St. Thomas the Apostle in Crystal Lake and St. Peter in Geneva from 1981 to 1983. Holdren was removed from the ministry for a reason not related to a child abuse allegation in July 1994, and died this past April, according to the diocese’s records.
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