Carlos Peralta
Father Carlos Peralta, an order priest of the Salesians of Don Bosco, arrived in the Archdiocese of Chicago from Peru in 1998 to minister to the expanding Spanish-speaking community of Saint John Bosco in Chicago’s Belmont Cragin neighborhood. What his new parishioners didn’t know was that for years Peralta had been shuffled across South America by his superiors in the Salesian order, leaving behind him a trail of allegations of sexual abuse of children. Supplied by the Salesians with a letter falsely attesting to his good character, Peralta was welcomed to Chicago by the archdiocese, where he settled into his new role. Because of years of cover ups by church authorities spanning the Western Hemisphere, Peralta would once again be in a position to sexually abuse children entrusted to his care.
It took less than 18 months for Peralta to strike again. In May 1999, the archdiocese and Salesians received credible allegations that Peralta had sexually abused at least three children. Neither the archdiocese nor the Salesians informed law enforcement. Instead, they kept the allegations secret from authorities for more than two months, quietly removing Peralta from public ministry and placing him on administrative leave. It was only in July 1999 that the archdiocese informed the Department of Children and Family Services. Three days later, the archdiocese’s review board concluded there was reasonable cause to suspect at least one of the allegations against Peralta was true.
It was too late. Peralta, with the help of the Salesians, left Chicago, escaping just ahead of a criminal investigation into his conduct. After briefly residing at church facilities in Virginia and New Jersey, Peralta left the United States for Mexico.
After Peralta’s escape, the archdiocese and Salesians washed their hands of responsibility for investigating his crimes. Despite finding reasonable cause to suspect he had committed sexual abuse, just after Peralta left Chicago the archdiocese closed its investigation and declined to name him on its list of confirmed abusers because he was a Salesian and not an archdiocesan priest. As for the Salesians, they refused to reach any conclusions regarding Peralta because, they said, they were not permitted to interview the families of Peralta’s survivors.
Once again, Peralta had evaded justice with the assistance of the church. In April 2002 a Salesian representative told the Chicago Tribune that Peralta was “working in Mexico City and has had no unsupervised contact with children.” But two years later, a Dallas Morning News investigation revealed Peralta was working as a priest out of a Salesian office across the street from a school.
After Peralta’s escape to Mexico, the archdiocese and Salesians came under pressure for the role they played in enabling his actions. In 1999, a lawsuit was filed alleging Peralta had molested four boys in Chicago. An investigation by the Department of Children and Family Services found evidence substantiating charges of sexual misconduct against Peralta. More recently, the Attorney General’s investigation uncovered a 2001 memorandum sent to Cardinal Francis George revealing the true state of the archdiocese’s knowledge: “Evidence points to the fact that Father Peralta may have molested many other minors during the few months he ministered at St. John Bosco.”
In November 2018, nearly two decades after his abuse was reported to the archdiocese, Peralta was finally added to the archdiocese’s list of clergy with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse. But the damage wrought by the church’s prior actions could not be entirely undone. Peralta is believed to be outside the United States and has not been brought to justice. Numerous survivors are left to carry the weight of his crimes—and the failures of the institutions that enabled him.