PHILADELPHIA (PA)
My Fox Philly
Kristen Byrne, Blogger
MyFoxPhilly.com
A young man took the stand Wednesday in a clergy-sex-abuse trial involving the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, telling the jury of the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of two priests; leading to his use of drugs.
The 23-year-old testified that former priest Edward Avery sexually abused him twice in the church storage room at St. Jerome Parish in northeast Philadelphia. Both incidents happened after Mass in 1999, when he was a 10-year-old altar boy.
Prosecutors showed the jury a photograph of the young man when he was a smiling fifth grader as the jury listened to him describe his involvement in school before the abuse.
The victim told the jury that Avery would have him do a striptease to fast-paced church music as he looked on with an “eerie smile”. The witness and Avery would then masturbate and perform oral sex on each other.
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