Brett Smith, accused of sexually assaulting children in Cook County, DuPage County and Indiana, had worked in at least four South Side and south suburban Catholic schools, Superintendent of Catholic Schools Greg Richmond wrote in a letter to parents on Sunday.
Smith, formerly known as Brett Zagorac, has been charged and convicted several times over the years for criminal sexual assault of a minor, and pleaded guilty in at least one of those cases.
In many of the incidents, his victims were children he was tutoring, according to news reports.
Smith was hired by the archdiocese in 2024 after passing a state background and fingerprint checks, according to Richmond’s letter.
After the archdiocese learned about the allegations against him, he was terminated and barred from the area’s Catholic schools, Richmond wrote.
The archdiocese confirmed in a statement that it received information about Smith’s “history of issues” in other states last week before firing him.
According to the archdiocese, Smith was a private tutor for at least one family with a student enrolled at a south suburban Catholic school. That family filed a complaint with their local police for “conduct that occurred while he was tutoring in their home,” Richmond wrote in the letter to parents.
The archdiocese did not say when the incident occurred or in which suburb.
Smith also worked as a long-term substitute teacher at St. Walter-St. Benedict School during the 2024-2025 school year and as an employee for a third-party vendor at Pope John Paul II School at the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year.
And as of this month, he was a substitute teacher at Queen of Martyrs School.
The archdiocese said it isn’t aware of any allegations of sexual misconduct against Smith at those schools. The letter did not explain Smith’s past allegations in Illinois and elsewhere.
Smith also uses the names “BJ Smith” and “BJ Wilhelm,” according to the archdiocese. He legally changed his name from Brett Zagorac in 2019, the archdiocese reported.
Zagorac, 43, has a lengthy record of sexual assault charges.
In October 2015, Zagorac was charged in Cook County with felony criminal sexual assault of a minor and two felony counts of grooming after a Wilmette family learned he was molesting their 9-year-old while he tutored the child, according to previous Sun-Times reporting and Cook County court records. He pleaded guilty to the charges in 2017, according to court records.
About five months after he was charged in the Wilmette case, Zagorac, living in Munster at the time, was again accused of molesting a child while tutoring.
A Chicago family who hired Zagorac as a tutor learned that he molested their 7-year-old after they heard he was accused of sexually abusing another student.
His criminal history includes misdemeanor battery convictions in DuPage County in 2005, Indiana in 2009 and Cook County in 2010 for similar crimes, according previous Sun-Times reporting.
Phone calls to numbers listed for Brett Smith and Brett Zagorac weren’t immediately returned.
The archdiocese is cooperating with the Department of Children and Family Services and two suburban police departments.
“This is a developing situation and we continue to seek to learn more about Mr. Smith’s background,” Richmond wrote. “The presence of this individual in some of our schools and with some of our students is very alarming. We want to thank parents at Queen of Martyrs who have been instrumental in shedding light on this situation.”
The archdiocese advises any parent whose child interacted with Smith in ways that made them uncomfortable to first contact the DCFS Hotline (1.800.25.ABUSE) and their local police department.
Then they should contact the Archdiocese Office for the Protection of Children and Youth at 312-534-5254 before informing their school principal.
In 2019, the Sun-Times reported that the Archdiocese of Chicago was $200 million in debt because of payouts related to sex abuse claims, which the church continues to dispute.
The archdiocese plans to close six Catholic grade schools this year because of declining enrollment and ongoing financial troubles.