PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog
Ralph Cipriano
She seemed genuinely conflicted. In two hours on the witness stand, Patricia Bukowski acknowledged that the defendant, Father James J. Brennan, was a gifted priest who had helped her through one of the darkest periods of her life.
“We hit it off,” Bukowski testified at the archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial. “He [Father Brennan] would come to dinner on Sunday. We became very close friends,” Bukowski told the jury. The Bukowski family called him Father at first, then it was just Jim.
He became “a member of the family,” Bukowski said. “He was like a brother to me.”
But Patricia “Trish” Bukowski of Newtown, Bucks County, is also the mother of Mark Bukowski, Father Brennan’s principal accuser. In two days on the witness stand last week, Mark Bukowski charged that in 1996 when he was 14 years old, Father Brennan allegedly attempted to rape him.
After the attempted rape, Mark Bukowski told the jury, he became trapped in a downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse, numerous criminal convictions, three suicide attempts and a discharge from the Marines for mental health reasons.
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