WEST VIRGINIA
Herald-Star
July 24, 2012
By JENNIFER COMPSTON-STROUGH – Special to the Herald-Star , The Intelligencer
WHEELING – Two men who were among a group of teens that accompanied then-Rev. Michael J. Bransfield to a Pennsylvania farm in the late 1970s to visit another priest told a Philadelphia newspaper this week that Bransfield did nothing inappropriate during their time together.
The men, Ronald Rock and Timothy Love, gave statements to the Philadelphia Inquirer that contradict claims made in a Philadelphia courtroom earlier this year.
During what has been called the “landmark” clergy-sex abuse case, a witness testified that a former defrocked priest who was not on trial, Stanley Gana, told him that Bransfield was having a relationship with one of the boys in the group that visited the farm. The witness, Mark Berkery, who told investigators that Gana had abused him for years, claims that Gana called the group Bransfield’s “fair-haired boys.”
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