Pa. Trial Shows Church Abuse Allegations Strategy

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
ABC News

By MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA March 31, 2012 (AP)

The long, typed letter fantasizes about a seventh-grader’s body, and asks if the boy wants to try various sex acts.

“You are soooo cute. I have been thinking about you for a long time. … You’re the cutest in our grade,” the author wrote in a rare G-rated line.

But the anonymous author was not a classmate at the boy’s Catholic school in northeast Philadelphia. It was a parish priest. One with a cache of gay pornography and sadomasochistic videos in the rectory.

Files show the letter-writing priest was sent to a church-run treatment center for priests, where staff concluded he did not have “a pathological interest in children or adults.” Doctors racked the letter up to a single fantasy. And they believed him when he said he hadn’t sent it — or acted out with children.

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