2 brothers describe allegations of abuse by the Rev. Michael Pfleger: ’I’m not carrying this burden, not one more year’
They grew up in an impoverished neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side, the two youngest of five children whose single mother insisted they go to church as a way to avoid gangs and drugs.
The preteen brothers joined the choir at Precious Blood Catholic Church and said they were drawn to a young, charismatic seminarian who directed their musical performances and took them out for pizza.
Nearly five decades later, the two men now say that former choir director, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, molested them dozens of times over several years beginning in the early 1970s. The brothers said they were sexually abused in Pfleger’s room at three churches, beginning at Precious Blood and including St. Sabina on the South Side, where the well-known priest has been assigned since his 1975 ordination.
The men, who are in their early 60s and live in Texas, said the abuse was a secret they had never revealed, not even to each other, until the younger of the two filed a complaint Jan. 4 to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. The archdiocese announced the next day that Pfleger had agreed to step away from ministry while an allegation of abuse was investigated.
In a nearly three-hour Tribune interview on Friday inside their lawyer’s Chicago office, the men at times grew emotional while accusing Pfleger of abusing their trust at a time when they looked to him as a male role model. Both men also granted a separate interview with CBS Chicago over the weekend.
“I go back in my young mind and I say to myself, ‘What’s happening here?’ And I ask myself, ‘What do I do, you know, other than freeze?’” said the older brother, a 63-year-old former police sergeant and U.S. Air Force veteran, choking back tears. “You lay there and you hold your breath and hope for the best.”
The men have asked not to be publicly named, in part to protect the privacy of relatives who still live in Chicago and, they said, fear possible fallout from supporters of Pfleger. The older brother filed his complaint with the archdiocese Friday.
On Sunday, Pfleger’s private legal team said the allegations are false and were made to gain a financial settlement. They said the younger brother wrote a letter to Pfleger late last month seeking $20,000 “to help me move on in this troubled and confused time in my life.” They said the letter noted past archdiocese settlements unrelated to Pfleger that have “changed (men’s) lives forever.”
Sandra Jackson displays an image of the Rev. Michael Pfleger as supporters rally Jan. 8, 2021, in his defense outside St. Sabina Church in Chicago's Auburn Gresham community. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
The younger man acknowledged in Friday’s interview with the Tribune that he had asked the priest in a letter to give him $20,000 but said he planned to use the payment as proof that he was abused. He said that if his motivation was purely financial, as Pfleger’s attorneys allege, he would have acted years earlier while he was battling addiction.
The allegations, if substantiated, threaten the legacy of a firebrand white minister who heads Chicago’s largest Black Catholic parish and who has crusaded against racism and poverty throughout his high-profile priesthood. Cardinal Blase Cupich is requiring Pfleger, 71, to live away from the parish while the matter is investigated.
“Allegations are claims that have not been proven as true or false. Therefore, guilt or innocence should not be assumed,” the archdiocese said in a statement after the initial allegation arose.
No previous allegation of sexual abuse has surfaced publicly against Pfleger. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services confirmed that this is the first time it has received such a complaint involving the outspoken priest.
In social media posts, Pfleger has thanked his loyal supporters and said he is hurt, devastated and angry but reminds himself others are suffering. “I cannot feel sorry for myself ... the pain in our world is REAL,” he wrote.
The Texas brothers, who are Black, took different paths in their lives.
The older of the two retired from the U.S. Air Force in 2003 when he was honorably discharged after a nearly 25-year career, according to his military paperwork, which lists various medals for his service. He also worked as a police officer in Texas, rising to the rank of patrol sergeant before becoming a senior project management consultant.
His brother, meanwhile, struggled for years with drug addiction. He served prison time in Illinois and Texas for burglary-related crimes, was released from parole about 14 years ago and said he has long maintained his sobriety. After two years of college, he became a licensed substance abuse counselor.
Now 61, the younger brother said that a televised Nov. 28 interview with Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory helped motivate him to notify the Chicago archdiocese. In the interview, Gregory spoke out about the Catholic Church’s failings in responding to the child sexual abuse crisis.
The brothers said they had met or seen Gregory on several occasions when Gregory was starting out in the Chicago archdiocese around the same time as Pfleger. The two men were assigned to the same Glenview church for a short time, according to archdiocese records. In a statement Monday, Gregory said he did not remember the brothers’ family but was confident the archdiocese would conduct a thorough investigation.
The younger brother said his career choice also had inspired his decision to come forward. The man, who spoke openly about his past drug addiction and crimes, said he is proud of how far he has come. Still, he said, it has nagged at him that he as a recovery specialist was asking others to do what he has been too ashamed to face.
“How can I tell someone to tell the truth and open up and empty themselves when I hadn’t myself?” he said. “That’s when I first decided to do this. My 12 years (of sobriety) was coming up, and I said it’s about time for you to free yourself from yourself.”
The man said that in addition to writing a letter to Pfleger, he decided on New Year’s Day to reach out to a Chicago attorney for help. The attorney, Eugene Hollander, has represented victims of defrocked priest Daniel McCormack in an infamous abuse case that helped lead to an overhaul of Chicago church policy.
“I said enough is enough,” the younger brother said. “I said I’m not carrying this burden, not one more year.”
He said Pfleger did not respond to his letter.
The two brothers grew up near Precious Blood, formerly at 2411 W. Congress Parkway, now Ida B. Wells Drive. The family struggled financially, they said, and their parents divorced before the youngest brother was born. Their father, a taxicab driver, was a distant presence in their lives.
They said their mother was spiritual, if not necessarily religious, and insisted her five children go to church to help keep them out of trouble.
The older brother said he was the first to join Precious Blood’s choir, when he was 11. It was 1969, and Pfleger was a young seminarian enrolled at St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein.
Inspired to become a priest by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Pfleger chose to live and work in the predominantly Black community at Precious Blood while commuting to the seminary for classes, according to his online biography and Tribune archives.
The younger brother said he joined the choir after his brother at about 12 years old. Both boys had slight builds, they said, weighing less than 100 pounds when they started high school. The younger described himself as more street savvy and prone to trouble than his straight-and-narrow older brother, who said he was shy and fearful of his neighborhood.
“I used to hate walking home,” said the older brother.
The brothers said Pfleger was the church’s choir director. He played the piano, assembled a church band and bucked the stereotypical image of a traditional priest, wearing colorful dashiki shirts. They said he was approachable, charismatic, dynamic and talented — and made them feel safe, protected and special.
The men told the Tribune they began spending more time at the church, including hanging out in Pfleger’s bedroom in the rectory, either with a group or alone. The older brother recalled watching television, drinking soda and listening to contemporary music such as the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar.”
The older brother said Pfleger began molesting him about a year after they met, when he was 12, and continued from 1970 to 1976, in dozens of incidents at Precious Blood, Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Glenview, St. Sabina and the Mundelein seminary.
The man said he often tried to pretend he was sleeping during the abuse, which included acts of penetration, according to his complaint. The two were always alone in the bedroom during the incidents, he told the Tribune. There were no threats, discussions or apologies afterward, he said.
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Despite the alleged abuse, the man said, he believed Pfleger cared about him.
He said Pfleger taught him how to drive in the priest’s Chevrolet Vega, which he said had a cream-colored interior. He said Pfleger got him into the Quigley North high school seminary, where he graduated in the mid-1970s. He attended Niles College for two years while he contemplated entering the priesthood, he said, before enlisting in the military instead.
“Having someone who encouraged you, who you felt looked out for you and provided for you — those were parental attributes and I felt comfortable,” he said. “I know it was a false premise now, but I didn’t know that then.”
He continued: “As an adult, I can see the difference, but as a child I could not. Bad love is just as good as good love when you need love.”
He left Illinois for the Air Force in 1979 and said he did not keep in touch with Pfleger, though he recalled coming back to attend the 2008 funeral of the priest’s father, whom he admired.
When asked to describe Pfleger’s room at Precious Blood, he said it was modestly decorated with a single twin bed, a small fridge, a seating area and a bathroom that connected to the bedroom of another church official.
The bedrooms of the Revs. Francis “Jerry” Maloney and his brother, Edward J. Maloney, were on the other end of a long corridor in the rectory. Both priests are now deceased. Edward J. Maloney was removed from ministry in 2009 for substantiated misconduct claims involving two boys at his next parish assignment in the mid-1980s, archdiocese records show.
At Precious Blood, the two Texas brothers said, no one ever questioned them about their sleepovers in Pfleger’s room. The older brother said that he often walked the church’s Doberman, named Barron, and that he felt comfortable enough to help himself to a soda or snack in the church’s kitchen, where the housekeeper sometimes served him breakfast.
The men said Pfleger took them out for pizza, shopping, the movies or traveling with the choir for performances at other churches. They recalled a fun trip with him to Six Flags in St. Louis and said Pfleger often gave them pocket money.
In the first complaint, the younger brother said he was 13 in the early 1970s when Pfleger began sexually abusing him. He said the first incident occurred when the seminarian gave him a ride home, first touching his leg and then unzipping his pants and performing an act of masturbation, according to his complaint.
The brothers said they often visited Pfleger at his next assignment at Our Lady of Perpetual Help and attended his ordination that next year in May 1975. They said the abuse continued at St. Sabina.
The younger brother alleged dozens of incidents of sexual abuse occurred in Pfleger’s bedroom at the priest’s three church assignments, though he said it did not involve penetration.
He joined the military in his late teens after graduating high school, records show. He served about eight months in the U.S. Army before he was discharged for a medical condition, according to his discharge paperwork.
Similar to his older brother, the man said he lost touch with the priest after moving to Texas in his late 20s. He recalled writing to him in his 40s to ask for financial help during a stint in a Texas prison, and he said the priest gave him $250.
“You hear people say they had a monkey on their back,” the younger man said of his addiction. “Well I had a silverback gorilla. I was using because I didn’t like the way I felt about a lot of different things.”
He also described writing the December letter to Pfleger.
“I drove to a FedEx, sat in the parking lot facing the street so people wouldn’t see the tears, and I wrote a four-page letter, and by the time I was finished I was so angry I didn’t even make a copy,” he said. “I just wanted to hurry up and send it off. It was like the world had been lifted off my shoulders.”
He eventually told his older brother, with whom he remains close and as a child saw as his protector. The two said they were each shocked to hear that the other had been abused.
The former police officer did not emerge without his own scars, he said, noting that trust issues played a role in three divorces and that a domestic dispute in his personal life ended his police career decades ago.
He felt compelled to report the allegations after hearing his brother’s story. Neither man said he was surprised by the fervent support for Pfleger. “I’m a devout believer too,” the older of the two brothers said. “My God knows this happened and it’s their God too.”
The priest’s lawyers, James Figliulo and Michael Monico, who do not work for the archdiocese, characterized the men’s complaints as “false attacks,” motivated by greed.
nikkas carjacking whips just to joy ride and carjack other cars then rinse & repeat ?
Whats the point ?
