PHILADELPHIA (PA)
New York Daily News
By Charlie Wells / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
The first U.S. Roman Catholic official convicted of covering up child sexual abuse inside the Church was sentenced Tuesday to 3-to-6 years in prison.
Judge M. Teresa Sarmina handed down Monsignor William J. Lynn’s sentence, just shy of the maximum seven-year penalty prosecutors had sought.
Sarmina told Lynn that he had permitted “monsters in clerical garb … to destroy the souls of children, to whom you turned a hard heart.” …
“I believe that what Lynn did was done by just about every diocese,” Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a website tracking cases of abuse, said to NBCPhiladelphia.com. “In most cases, I think the vicar general was well informed, and also the bishop.”
According to McKiernan’s group, over 500 priests have been convicted of abuse.
As for Lynn, prosecutors were not at a loss for harsh words.
“His active, even eager execution of archdiocese policies – carried out in the face of victims’ vivid suffering, and employing constant deceit – required a more amoral character, a striving to please his bosses no matter how sinister the business,” they wrote in a sentencing memo obtained by CBS News and filed Friday. “At any time during those 12 years, he could have had a moment of conscience.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.