A trailblazing Black priest who was a civil rights hero to many African American Catholics was accused Tuesday of being an alleged sexual abuser of a young boy in an $800,000 settlement reached with the Archdiocese of Chicago, according to a lawyer for the boy.

The Rev. George Clements was the pastor of the Holy Angels Church in Chicago when he allegedly began preying on the then 7-year-old boy in 1974, according to the accuser’s attorney, Mitchell Garabedian.

The alleged abuse, which happened at least 20 times until 1979 when the young man turned 12, took place in the church rectory, in Clements’ car, and while on a camping trip, the lawyer said.

“It was the worst you could imagine,” Garabedian said of the alleged abuse during a news conference in Chicago. “When my client reported the abuse to his mother, [he says] his mother locked him in the closet…