philly.com
11 April 2012
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The former baseball coach of the alleged victim of a sexual assault by the Rev. James J. Brennan told a Philadelphia jury today that he once saw Brennan massaging the preteen boy’s back during a postgame house party in about 1990.
Robert T. Kane testified that the boy – the son of one of his assistant coaches – had been playing with friends outside and returned inside sweaty and wearing no shirt.
As the boy sat at a table, Kane said, Brennan approached from behind and began massaging the boy’s bare shoulders.
The image stuck in his head, Kane told the Common Pleas Court jury under questioning by Assistant District Attorney Jacqueline Coelho.
“It was kind of like looking at a black-and-white picture and seeing someone wearing a yellow hat,” Kane testified. “I just seemed odd to me.”
Kane’s testimony provided an element of independent corroboration of last week’s testimony of the alleged victim, now a 30-year-old Bucks County man identified as “Mark” in the Philadelphia County grand jury report.
But Kane’s testimony was attacked by Brennan’s attorney, William Brennan (no relation), who picked at inconsistencies between Kane’s in-court statements and his Feb. 20 statement to a detective for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office.
Brennan also questioned why Kane never told Mark’s parents or anyone else at the time.
“What are we doing here?” Brennan said, adding: “Let’s hear it! It’s possible child abuse but it’s not enough to get you to talk to his parents.”
Kane said he was reluctant to raise the issue because he knew that Mark’s mother was “very close to Father Brennan. She was always talking about him and I was afraid she’d get mad at me.”
Kane, however, insisted that the priests actions seemed odd: “I thought it was unusual for a priest to be massaging a boy’s back. I could see a mother or father doing that but not a priest.”
Father Brennan is charged with attempting to rape the same boy in 1996 when the alleged victim was 14. Brennan has denied the allegations.
On trial with Brennan is Msgr. William J. Lynn, who as secretary for clergy was the archdiocesan official responsible for investigating wayward priests. The landmark case is the first in which a church official has been criminally charged with enabling or covering up the sexual abuse of minors by priests.