PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog
Ralph Cipriano
He broke down several times on the witness stand. His face turned red. At times he cried so hard, he covered his face with paper towels, just to hide his embarrassment.
But when it was all over, after three hours of cross-examination, Mark Bukowski stubbornly and defiantly clung to his story: that in 1996 when he was just 14 years old, he was sexually abused by Father James J. Brennan, and that the abuse he endured haunts him to this day. And even though Brennan’s lawyer, William J. Brennan (no relation), went over every aspect of the story, and found some minor discrepancies, he could not budge Bukowski from his talking points.
“He tried to have sex with me as a kid,” Bukowski yelled at the defense lawyer at one point. “It’s his fault, and not mine.”
The prosecution witness who had a meltdown on Wednesday, crying and getting too confused to continue, made a remarkable comeback on Thursday. “We had him yesterday,” one defense lawyer was overheard lamenting. And that was bad news for Father James J. Brennan, on trial for the attempted rape of Bukowski.
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