William C. Wert
Even after Father William Wert was convicted of assaulting a 14 year old boy, his Carmelite religious order let him move to the group’s retirement home. And while he was there, Wert was criminally convicted of sexually abusing another 14 year old boy. Given these convictions, one would have hoped the Carmelite order and the Diocese of Joliet—where Wert ministered for over a decade—would have disclosed Wert on their public lists of credibly accused priests. They did not do so, however, until the Attorney General’s investigators intervened.
After ministering across the country and in Canada, Wert arrived in the Diocese of Joliet in 1987. In 1990, he was appointed the athletic director and then principal of Joliet Catholic Academy. He remained in the diocese until 1993 and then returned to the area again between 1999 and 2004.
In May 2007, while living in Washington D.C., Wert was charged with sexual abuse of a minor. He followed a 14 year old boy from a train station, asked if he knew somewhere they could hide, and then grabbed the child’s inner thigh. Wert was convicted of simple assault and sentenced to 180 days in jail. The Carmelites removed Wert from public ministry and imposed a “safety plan” but did not strip him of his clerical status.
After he was released from jail, Wert retreated to the Carmelite’s retirement home near Venice, Florida, to serve out his five years of probation. The Carmelites claimed they “took steps” to keep Wert away from children. Nevertheless, the Carmelites did not notify the local diocese of Wert’s criminal conviction. The Carmelites felt this “was not necessary because Wert was not authorized to perform ministry for the diocese.”
Whatever “steps” the Carmelites took to keep Wert away from children were inadequate. In January 2011, a Venice father found lewd messages from Wert on his 14 year old son’s phone. The father reported Wert to the authorities, who charged him with 11 counts of sexual battery and lewd behavior. At trial, it was revealed that Wert and the boy met in an online chat room sometime in the fall of 2010. For the next several months, Wert sexually abused the child in the Carmelite’s residence, an empty house, a wooded area, and a motel room. In February 2013, a jury convicted Wert of eight counts of illegal sexual activity and sentenced him to life in prison.
The boy’s father also filed a lawsuit against Wert and the Carmelites for sexual abuse and failing to supervise, respectively. That case settled in 2011. Wert was “separated” from the Carmelite order in 2012 but was not laicized until March 2015.
In August 2019, the Attorney General’s investigators sought to have the Diocese of Joliet add Wert to its public list on the basis of his two criminal convictions. The diocese did not do so. Then, in February 2020, the investigators informed the diocese that Wert had been added to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’s public list and reiterated the need for the Diocese of Joliet to do the same. It finally did so after the Carmelites disclosed Wert on the order’s public list. All told, the diocese did not disclose Wert until February 2021—14 years after the disgraced priest was first convicted of assaulting a child.