PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The Roman Catholic bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, W.Va., today denied allegations he sexually abused a child during the late 1970s or that he knowingly let other priests use his properties for that purpose when he was a priest in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
“I have never sexually abused anyone,” Bishop Michael J. Bransfield said in a statement released by his diocese.
The statement by Bransfield, 68, a native of Roxborough who was ordained in 1970 by the late Cardinal John Krol, came one day after the testimony of a sex-abuse victim in the trial of two Philadelphia clerics in the church sex abuse trial involving the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
On Wednesday, a 48-year-old man, identified only as “John” in the 2005 report of the Philadelphia County grand jury, alleged he was molested for years beginning in high school by the Rev. Stanley Gana, a priest in his Kensington parish.
The man also described an encounter one summer when he lived on Gana’s 110-acre farm in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The witness said was building a flagstone wall when a car driven by then-Rev. Bransfield pulled up with several teenage boys inside.
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