Lawsuit Claims Burbank Park District Missed Predator's Past Sex Abuse Convictions

Thomas Hacker, 79, inmate photo at Big Muddy Correctional Institute.

A man is suing the Burbank Park District over claims that he was sexually abused by an employee who is currently serving a prison sentence for sexually assaulting three Oak Lawn Boy Scouts in the 1980s.

“John Doe” filed a lawsuit Sept. 29 in Cook County Circuit Court against the park district citing one count of negligence and one count of willful and wanton misconduct, Cook County Record reports.

According to the lawsuit, Burbank Park District hired Thomas Hacker, who served as park director between 1984 and 1988. The suit alleges that the park district should have known of Hacker’s previous conviction for child sex abuse and did not perform adequate background checks. Such due diligence for new hires would have revealed Hacker’s past criminal history.

“John Doe” participated in park district programs as a pre-adolescent in the 1980s. He alleges that Hacker sexually abused him in his office on the park premises.

The plaintiff is seeking a jury trial and is asking for damages in excess of $50,000. Attorney Evan Smola, of the Chicago law firm Hurley McKenna & Mertz.

The lawsuit is the latest to be filed stemming from Hacker’s prolific career as a pedophile in the southwest suburbs.

Hacker moved to the Chicago area in 1971, a year after he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in Indianapolis. He was convicted of a second misdemeanor offense while living in Chicago’s northwest suburbs for taking indecent liberties with a child.

Hacker left the northwest suburbs and disappeared on the South Side, where he taught in Chicago Public Schools and worked as a park director for the Oak Lawn and Burbank park districts.

Hacker has been described as one of the most prolific molesters in scouting when the Boy Scouts’ secret records of decades of sex abuse allegations were made public in 2012.

For 15 years, Hacker preyed upon young Oak Lawn and Burbank in his various roles as a baseball coach, camp counselor, scout leader and park director.

In July 1976, Hacker was arrested by Oak Lawn police for allegedly pulling down a boy’s pants. He received supervision.

Hacker was convicted in 1989 on 25 counts of having oral sex with underage boys who belonged to the St. Louis de Montfort Boy Scout troop in Oak Lawn.

Trial testimony horrified parents who had been fooled by Hacker’s manic need to please everyone and his disingenuous concern for their sons.

A man hired to start a start a Tae Kwon Do program for the Burbank Park District in the 1980s, described Hacker as a “typical con man.”

“Looking back in hindsight, he was very affable and gregarious, and very much involved with the kids,” said Tom Cameron, who was in his twenties when Hacker hired him as a instructor. “Did Hacker strike me as being unusual, not in the role he was in. People in those types of roles tend to be community-minded, like kids and are very outgoing.”

Sixteen former scouts from St. Louis de Montfort Troop 16 also have a pending case against Hacker, the Boy Scouts of America and the Chicago Region Council. The scouts, now grown men, claim they repressed boyhood memories of the abuse.

Hacker, 79, has been declared a sexually dangerous person. He is serving an indefinite sentence in Big Muddy River Correctional Center where fashions himself as a grandfather figure to the other inmates.

Hacker is also said to be writing his autobiography.