The US attorney general said on Tuesday that 451 priests had committed acts of pedophilia against nearly 2,000 minors in the state of Illinois since the 1950s, far more than the church had previously acknowledged.

His office launched an investigation into sexually predatory priests in 2018 after reports of a Pennsylvania church rocked the US, and on Tuesday released its findings in a nearly 700-page document.

“Prior to this investigation, Catholic dioceses in Illinois published a list of 130 known pedophiles. By comparison, this report reveals the names and details of 451 priests and monks who abused at least 1,997 children,” prosecutor Kwame Raul wrote in the preamble.

These abusers, many of whom are dead, “may never face justice, but by naming them we want to bring transparency and a little relief to the victims who have suffered in silence for a long time,” he added.

In an earlier report, his predecessor, Lisa Madigan, had already indicated that she had been made aware of “allegations against at least 500 priests” who were not on the list published by the state’s six dioceses. The activities of her successor improved the count.

His report contains many harrowing accounts, including a woman who was repeatedly raped by a priest who worked as a math teacher in a Catholic school when she was ten years old; and men who were abused as children and then struggled with suicidal thoughts and addictive behaviors for years.

He also draws attention to the responsibility of the hierarchy, which for a long time was satisfied with the transfer of priests accused of pedocrime to other dioceses without exposing them.

The American Catholic Church was rocked by a series of articles in the Boston Globe in 2002 about clerical abuse in the eastern city. The revelations, popularized in the movie Spotlight, raised the voices of victims across the country.

Since then, many priests have been expelled from the clergy and prosecuted. The church also paid out significant sums to compensate the victims.

In 2018, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office dealt another blow to the church when it detailed the sexual abuse of more than 1,000 children by more than 300 priests over several decades.

As a result, several states have conducted similar investigations. In April, the state of Maryland released a list of 150 pedophile priests guilty of “horrendous and repeated” abuse of at least 600 children between the 1940s and 2002.