Philadelphia Daily News

25 January 2012

BY MENSAH M. DEAN

deanm@phillynews.com 215-854-5949

CITY PROSECUTORS yesterday continued to pile on the allegations that a former high-ranking official of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia facilitated the sexual abuse of church children by repeatedly looking the other way when confronted with jaw-dropping crimes of predator priests.

“Time and time and time again, they lie to victims because they are not concerned about the victims; they are just concerned about the almighty dollar and mother Church,” Chief of Special Investigations Patrick Blessington said of the Archdiocese, which once employed the four defendants who are to stand trial in March.

Defendant Monsignor William Lynn, 61, at times appeared red-faced during the second day of a “prior-bad-acts” hearing at the Criminal Justice Center.

Lynn, secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, is charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of a child and conspiracy for allegedly shuffling dangerous priests among parishes instead of calling the police.

Among his co-defendants, priest James Brennan, 48, is charged with raping a 14-year-old altar boy in 1996, and priest Charles Engelhardt, 65, and defrocked priest Edward Avery, 69, are both charged with raping a 10-year-old altar boy beginning in 1998.

Blessington and three colleagues from the District Attorney’s Office spent much of yesterday – as they will today – trying to persuade Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina to allow into evidence decades of allegations against dozens of priests who have not been charged, to show the jury Lynn’s alleged pattern of behavior.

Lynn’s Archdiocese-paid attorneys protested the inclusion of every old case, typically on the grounds that the crimes happened long before Lynn was in office, or because he had done all that he could in his capacity to keep problem priests from children.

“How do all these cases relate to the [endangering the welfare of a child charges]?” defense attorney Jeffrey Lindy snapped at one point. “What they’re talking about is the Archdiocese as a whole.”

The prosecutors, however, used church memos and other documents to try to demonstrate that Lynn was protective of predator priests and less than sympathetic to their victims.

In 1994, after Father Thomas F. Shea admitted molesting two altar boys from 1972 to 1977 and told Lynn that one boy had been fooling around with other children, Lynn wrote: ” ‘It is possible that Shea was seduced into it.’ ” Blessington said. Shea retired in 1995.

Also in 1994, while investigating allegations that Father Joseph P. Gausch had masturbated a 12-year-old boy multiple times in the early 1980s, Lynn asked the victim if he could have misinterpreted Gausch’s actions, Assistant District Attorney Jacqueline Coelho said.

Documents also indicate that Lynn told Gausch that the boy came from a dysfunctional family, that he wanted money and that his background needed further investigation.

” ‘We’re behind you, we’re on your side,’ ” Lynn told Gausch, according to Coelho.

By the time Gausch died in May 1999, the Archdiocese had received more than 12 sexual-assault complaints against him from boys that spanned from 1945 to the early 1980s. Many of the complaints were made after his death.

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Should jury know about monsignor’s response to abuse claims?

philly.com

January 24, 2012

By John P. Martin, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

They also contend that as the archdiocese Secretary for Clergy between 1992 and 2004, Lynn supervised 800 priests but didn’t have unilateral authority to reassign them, order them into treatment or remove them from ministry.

Those decisions fell to his superiors, in particular Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, the attorneys said, and were often dictated by broader church policies about how to handle abuse allegations.

“There is a continual misapprehension about what (Lynn) was allowed to do,” Jeffrey Lindy, one of the lawyers hired by the archdiocese to defend Lynn, told Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina.

Prosecutors challenged that assertion, pointing out that Lynn described himself as the cardinal’s delegate on matters including the review of priests accused of abusing children.

Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington also noted that prosecutors intend to argue that Lynn didn’t act alone. “He’s always been charged … in a conspiracy with other archdiocesan officials,” Blessington said.

He and three colleagues spent nearly six hours Tuesday recounting Lynn’s actions in investigating or responding to abuse allegations – some decades old – against nearly a dozen priests when he was Secretary of Clergy.

All the priests they discussed have been removed from ministry, left the priesthood or died. The accusations against them were first disclosed in 2005, after a grand jury investigation that examined clergy-sex abuse in Philadelphia but ended without criminal charges.

Prosecutors say those cases demonstrate how Lynn and church officials failed to properly investigate abuse allegations, shuffled abusive priests among churches, and concealed their conduct from unsuspecting parents and parishioners.

They say two such priests, the Rev. James J. Brennan and the former Rev. Edward Avery, molested boys in the late 1990s after Lynn recommended placing them in parishes with schools. Both are awaiting trial on child-sex assault charges.

Both sides are expected to make their final arguments to Sarmina on Wednesday. The trial is scheduled to begin March 26 and last as long as four months.

 

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Contact staff writer John P. Martin at 215-854-4774, at jmartin@phillynews.com or at JPMartinInky on Twitter.