United States: Episcopal priest Richard Kearney convicted of abusing teenage boys in his parishes
Request a correction or replyRecord class
Core record
Evidence status
Convicted
Authority role
Episcopal priest, Diocese of Chicago
Organization
Episcopal Diocese of Chicago
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
Kearney used his position as parish priest to access and groom teenage boys in his own congregations; a college-age victim's 1980s disclosure to his bishop was followed by delay in police notification rather than immediate report, during which at least one further boy was abused.
- Pastoral or clerical authority
Evidence structure
Proceedings
1991-03-01 · guilty plea and sentence
Illinois state court. Kearney pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse of teenage boys in his parishes in the mid-1980s and was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, of which he served approximately 18 months. He was deposed from the priesthood in March 1991. A subsequent civil suit against the diocese, alleging bishops delayed reporting an earlier disclosure to police, was settled for $750,000 in 2022.
Documented coercion mechanisms
- pastoral authority over teenage parishioners
- institutional delay by diocesan bishops after disclosure
Cited record
Sources
- institutional reporting news report 'Chicago Episcopal diocese's $750,000 sex abuse case involving Richard Kearney puts Bishop Chilton Knudsen's actions under scrutiny', Chicago Sun-Times, 3 June 2022.
Report detailing Kearney's 1991 conviction, sentence, and the diocese's later civil settlement over its handling of an earlier disclosure.
- institutional reporting institutional statement 'Revisiting Diocesan Files on Clergy Sexual Abuse', Episcopal Diocese of Chicago.
The diocese's own account of Kearney's conviction and deposition from the priesthood.
Source provenance
Source access and integrity log
This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.
- Source and tier basis
- https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/6/3/23147117/clergy-sex-abuse-episcopal-church-chilton-knudsen-frank-griswold-richard-kearney-waukegan-chicago Corpus classification: institutional-reporting; evidentiary role: news-report. SHA-256 1408c7a8014fdd6e6155bd897069e9197c4e0bfde5c653784e45932cabd4a0dd
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
- Source and tier basis
- https://episcopalchicago.org/revisiting-diocesan-files-on-clergy-sexual-abuse/ Corpus classification: institutional-reporting; evidentiary role: institutional-statement. SHA-256 0a846d0db18f161265bdaa56d167df80743003ab836d57eb4583c42d7eef3593
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
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Related record
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