WEST VIRGINIA
WTOV
A STATEMENT FROM THE DIOCESE OF WHEELING-CHARLESTON
Two witnesses whose testimony in a recent trial in Philadelphia led to speculation that Bishop Bransfield may have abused minors in the late 1970s have clarified that they have no such knowledge or information.
In addition, two Philadelphia men have come forward to strongly refute the speculation, and it has been confirmed that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia declared such an allegation unfounded after conducting an investigation when the allegation was first reported in 2007. The details of each of these developments are provided below.
1. At the recent Philadelphia trial of two clerics, a man who was the victim of sexual abuse by another priest, then-Father Stanley Gana, was permitted to testify that on one occasion when then-Father Michael Bransfield visited Gana’s farm outside Philadelphia, Gana told him that Bransfield had been sexually abusing the boy in the front seat of his car. The boy in the front seat of Bransfield’s car on that occasion at Gana’s farm has now been identified as Ronald Rock, a Philadelphia business executive who was a Lansdale Catholic High School student at the time. Rock has confirmed that he was the boy in the front seat of the car and that Bransfield never engaged in any improper conduct of any kind. Rock has explained that his family owned a cabin near Gana’s farm, that he invited then-Fr. Bransfield, a teacher at Lansdale Catholic, to accompany him and a group of his friends to the cabin on one weekend, and that they had visited Gana’s farm that weekend.
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