Landmark Priest Sex Trial Begins

Windsor Star
March 24, 2012

http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Landmark+priest+trial+begins/6353304/story.html

The landmark trial of a Catholic Church official accused of covering up pedophile abuses in the United States is set to start Monday.

Monsignor William Lynn, who oversaw the assignment of priests to schools and parishes across the Philadelphia region, faces accusations that he failed to keep priests accused of sexual abuse away from minors.

The role of such a senior official, whose co-defendant Reverend James Brennan is accused of sexually abusing boys in the 1990s, makes the trial the first of its kind in the U.S.

In a surprise pretrial twist Thursday, another co-defendant, defrocked priest Edward Avery, pleaded guilty to his own sex crimes, thereby avoiding trial. He was immediately sentenced to between 2? and five years in prison.

The accusations against the three men read like many other church sex abuse coverups, in which priests accused of wrongdoing were shuffled from one parish to another.

With a high-up official in the dock for allegedly shielding perpetrators of sex abuse, the case threatens to widen the legal onslaught over a scandal that has already bled the Catholic Church of credibility and money.

"If these ranks of middle managers from which the bishops are drawn, if this really starts to be scrutinized, the people who have become bishops are going to be caught in the web," said Terry McKiernan, from the website bishop-accountability.org, which tracks reported abuses. "That's a mess that the church in the U.S. does not want opened."

The case can be dated back to 1992, when a former parishioner accused Avery of molesting him in the 1980s.

As secretary for the clergy between 1992 and 2004, Lynn was responsible for investigating of reports of abuse. Yet he never stopped Avery.

When Avery had completed a rehabilitation program, Lynn assigned him to a parish with a school, despite the fact that Avery's therapist warned against putting him around children.

At that parish, Avery allegedly encountered a 10-year-old altar boy referred to in court as "Bill," and abused him.

In another incident described in court documents, Brennan allegedly raped a 14-year-old boy during a sleepover in 1996.

Even after that boy's parents reported the rape, Lynn did nothing but transfer Brennan within the Philadelphia region.

Defence lawyers are casting doubt on the credibility of two alleged victims who have histories of drug abuse and also are looking to sue the archdiocese.