PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The New York Times
By JON HURDLE
Published: April 4, 2012
PHILADELPHIA — A 30-year-old man said Wednesday that a priest’s actions took the man down a path that included more than a decade of drug and alcohol abuse, multiple criminal convictions and three suicide attempts.
The accuser, a former Marine, took the witness stand during the second week of a landmark trial of two Roman Catholic priests. One of them, the Rev. James J. Brennan, is charged with trying to rape the accuser in 1996, when he was 14.
In sometimes tearful testimony, the man said the assault took place at Father Brennan’s apartment in West Chester, Pa., during an overnight stay.
The alleged attack, and an occasion three years later when the accuser said Father Brennan exposed himself, combined to traumatize the man, he said, and led to a pattern of behavior that also included getting discharged from the Marine Corps and using drugs in an attempt to be rid of the pain of what he endured.
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