PHILADLEPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
A Philadelphia man told a jury today that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia priest who allegedly sexually abused him for years starting the late 1970s had said a colleague who is now a bishop in West Virginia also had sex with teenage boys.
The 48-year-old witness, identified only as “John” in the 2005 report of the Philadelphia County grand jury, described a meeting one summer in high school where he spent summers at the Rev. Stanley Gana’s 110-acre farm in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
He said he was building a flagstone wall when a car pulled up driven by then-Rev. Michael J. Bransfield and containing several teenage boys.
Bransfield is now bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.
“They’re his fair-haired boys,” the witness said Gana told him after the brief visit ended. “The one in the front seat he is having sex with.”
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