Victim Files New Priest Molestation Case Against Alleged Serial Predator
At a news conference, attorneys for a victim of a Chicago pedophile priest will disclose and discuss a new civil child sexual abuse and cover up lawsuit against the cleric and his superiors in the Greek Orthodox church. The victims’ attorneys, who have several other pending child molestation cases against Chicago predators, and members of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
In the late 1970s, a then teenaged altar boy was repeatedly sexually assaulted by Rev. Nicholas E. Katinas at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in Olympia Fields, IL. Katinas was pastor there from 1969 until 1978, when his superiors transferred him to a Dallas church where he worked for 28 years. He faces at least four civil lawsuits from victims he molested in the 1980s in Texas.
The boy and his family were devout Assumption parishioners, and the suit charges that Katinas molested other boys at Assumption before and after this boy. By 1974, the lawsuit alleges, the Assumption parish council president “had personally observed at least four suspicious incidents suggestive of pedophilia involving Katinas.” He and other church members pressured top church officials to remove Katinas but no one reported his crimes to law enforcement.
The victim is suing under ‘fraudulent concealment,’ a theory used last month in a Catholic priest case in southern Illinois. A jury awarded that victim $5 million.
The suit is being filed in Cook County Circuit Court. Defendants include Katinas, the Assumption parish, the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Denver (the regional church body) and The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (the national church body), which has 1.5 million members US wide.
Katinas, now 73, is believed to have left the country. In January, he was defrocked. The victim, now in his 40s and living in the Midwest.
