PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
Monica Yant Kinney, Inquirer Columnist
For a lying, scheming criminal and junkie, he cleaned up well, and, under bruising cross-examination, more than held his own.
If I had to score Round One of the most important testimony to date in the trial concerning sex abuse and conspiracy in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, I’d give it to the beleaguered – yet believable – 30-year-old victim staring at his alleged abuser in court.
“Mark,” as he was labeled in the 2011 grand jury report, is the Bucks County man charging a criminal breach of trust by the Rev. James J. Brennan, a priest and family friend he thought of as an uncle.
Brennan stands accused of the 1996 attempted rape of Mark in a West Chester apartment. But for nearly three hours Wednesday, it was Mark – who has spent the last decade in jail, on suicide watch or undergoing psychiatric treatment – who found himself on trial.
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