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More than 450 credibly accused child sex abusers have ministered in the Catholic Church in Illinois over almost seven decades, the office of the state’s attorney general, Kwame Raoul, said Tuesday in an investigative report (báo cáo điều tra). That is more than four times the number that the church had publicly disclosed before 2018, when the state began its investigation.

The 696-page report found that clergy (tăng lữ) members and lay religious brothers had abused at least 1,997 children since 1950 in the state’s six dioceses, including the prominent Archdiocese (địa phận thuộc quyền cai quản của một tổng giám mục) of Chicago.

The report adds 149 names to lists of child sex abusers whom the dioceses (giáo khu) themselves had publicly identified before or during the investigation. That brings the total number of identified abusers to 451, the report says. None of them are known to be in active ministry, and at least 330 are believed to have died.

The 149 new names are mostly religious brothers, who are accountable primarily to independent religious orders rather than to local dioceses and bishops.

Investigators interviewed hundreds of victims, and matched their accounts with diocesan records and other interviews to substantiate their accounts. Investigators also reviewed more than 100,000 pages of files held by the dioceses, and interviewed church leaders and their representatives.

One case among many documented in the report involves Thomas Francis Kelly, a priest who abused more than 15 boys ranging in age from 11 to 17 in several parishes in the 1960s and 1970s.