PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog
Ralph Cipriano
A secret list of sexually abusive priests that Cardinal Bevilacqua ordered shredded in 1994 is now at the center of a tangled web of deception, lies and suspicious memory lapses.
Prosecutors in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse case Monday tried to unravel the mystery in court, with messy results. On the witness stand was Timothy R. Coyne, a lawyer who was the former director of the archdiocese office for legal services. Coyne told the jury that when he originally went looking for the list in 2002, the first person he visited was Msgr. Lynn.
“He said he didn’t know where it was,” Coyne testified. Two years later, with grand jury subpoenas flying around, Coyne went on another search for the memo. He sent faxes to Cardinal Bevilacqua and three top aides, but once again, nobody knew where the list was.
But in 2006, when the list was suddenly rediscovered in a locked archdiocese safe, Coyne realized he’d been had.
“Somebody lied to me, or everybody lied to me,” Coyne told the jury about his former bosses at the archdiocese.
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