Bransfield Denies Abuse Allegations

Parkersburg News and Sentinel
April 19, 2012

http://www.newsandsentinel.com/page/content.detail/id/560173/Bransfield-denies-abuse-allegations.html?nav=5061

WHEELING -Bishop Michael J. Bransfield issued a statement Thursday denying the allegations made Wednesday in a priest-abuse trial in Philadelphia.

"I have never sexually abused anyone," Bransfield said in a statement released by the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese.

Bransfield said he was in Rome attending meetings at the Vatican when this "false story" was publicly released by the media without his knowledge or input.

"To say I was shocked and saddened would be an understatement," he said.

A man Wednesday testified that a priest raped him in the 1970s at a beach house owned by Bransfield. The man said he was told Bransfield also sexually abused a boy and testified he saw Bransfield with a car full of boys at a farm owned by his accused abuser, the Rev. Stanley Gana, whom the witness said Gana told him Bransfield was having sex with the boy in the front seat.

"I have been deeply saddened by the priest child abuse scandal that has been connected to a handful of my former colleagues and friends from St. Charles Seminary," Bransfield stated in the release. "Over the years, I have felt devastation for both the victims and the church as I learned about the terrible actions they took with innocent victims.

"To now be unfairly included in that group and to hear the horrific allegations that are being made of me is unbelievable and shocking. As a native of Roxboro, I consider Philadelphia my home. I have openly been an advocate for the eradication of the abusive behavior of priests in every diocese, and have demonstrated this in the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, where I now live and serve."

Bransfield is not charged with any crimes in the case and has never been charged with sexually abusing children.

In his statement, Bransfield dissected the allegations and refuted them wholesale.

"The nature of these statements and the manner in which they were released however go way beyond any sense of fairness and propriety. This case has gone on for seven years or more and simple facts like whether I own, or owned, a farm in the Scranton area were easily determinable. Contrary to the statements, I do not own, and never owned a farm in the Scranton area, upstate New York, or anywhere else for that matter," he stated.

Bransfield said the statement that Gana abused a minor at a home which he owned on the shore use was misleading.

"What did not get released was additional information available to the prosecutor that I was not aware of the incident and was not present at the house at the time. Gana has confirmed those facts in prior reports."