No Bond For Ex-Priest Facing Child Porn Charge
By Matt O'Connor, Tribune staff reporter
Originally published in the Chicago Tribune, June 17, 2002
A former priest who was charged with possession of child pornography last week, and who authorities said checked himself into a Chicago hospital as a suicide risk over the weekend, was ordered held without bond today by a federal magistrate judge.
Vincent McCaffrey, 49, who was removed in 1991 from a South Side parish over child sexual abuse allegations and who prosecutors said was forced to leave the priesthood two years later, made an initial appearance in the Chicago courtroom of Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys.
Keys ordered McCaffrey held without bond after Assistant U.S. Atty. T. Markus Funk described the defendant as a flight risk and a danger to the community. The prosecutor said McCaffrey has confessed to being addicted to child pornography and teenage boys.
"The government believes we have a child abuser on our hands," Funk said.
Moreover, last Friday, when McCaffrey was formally charged, he checked himself into Rush Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center as a suicide risk, Funk said. The prosecutor referred to the defendant as "unpredictable" and having little control over himself when under stress.
Catharine O'Daniel, McCaffrey's attorney, said her client has been in mental health treatment since 1987, has diabetes and is on anti-depressants. Daniel said for the last 11 years McCaffrey has worked for State Farm Insurance, and before that, managed an Amoco service station in Winnetka. He also worked at the Crate & Barrel store in the Old Orchard Shopping Center, Skokie, at some point, she said.
Keys said conditions for McCaffrey's release, should he ever allow it, would include a sizable bond, electronic monitoring and someone appointed to be a custodian for the defendant. McCaffrey's next court date is a preliminary hearing Thursday before Keys.
McCaffrey was charged Friday with possessing hundreds of images of child pornography in his condominium, on the 6700 block of North Artesian Avenue, Chicago. A criminal complaint said McCaffrey made admissions to the charge Tuesday, and U.S. Customs Service agents found at least 1,500 images of child pornography in his computer as well as printouts under his mattress.
Mary McDonough, a spokeswoman for the Chicago archdiocese, said Friday that McCaffrey was removed as an associate pastor from Our Lady of Good Counsel on the city's South Side in November 1991 amid allegations of sexual misconduct with minors.
A spokeswoman for the Customs Service said New Zealand authorities uncovered child pornography Web sites there and discovered through bank and credit card records that McCaffrey had been a subscriber for more than two months last year.
