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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Chicago, Illinois, USA · 2009

United States: Jesuit spiritual director Donald McGuire convicted in state and federal courts

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Jesuit priest and spiritual director

Organization

Society of Jesus, Loyola Academy

Spiritual nexus

His victims were students and retreatants under his personal spiritual direction — the travel, the retreats and the access were all framed as formation.

  • Guru or spiritual-teacher authority
  • Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2009-01-01 · state jury conviction; federal conviction and 25-year sentence

    Illinois state court (2006); US federal court (2008–09). Donald McGuire, a Jesuit priest and prominent spiritual director, was convicted by an Illinois jury in 2006 on five felonies for abusing two Loyola Academy students in the 1960s, then convicted federally in 2008–09 for molesting a boy during international trips he arranged as spiritual direction, receiving 25 years. Dismissed from the Jesuits in 2007 and laicised in 2008, he died in federal prison in 2017. A separate Arizona indictment's disposition is unconfirmed and is not asserted.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • spiritual direction and retreats used to structure access
  • international travel arranged as religious formation

Primary record

Sources

national broadcaster court reporting sentencing report 'Former priest Father McGuire sentenced to 25 years in molestation case', ABC7 Chicago (2009).

Reports the federal sentence atop the 2006 state conviction.

Related record

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