CALIFORNIA
Mercury News
By Tracey Kaplan
tkaplan@mercurynews.com
mercurynews.com
Posted: 07/06/2012
For weeks as the priest-beating trial unfolded, it was the victim’s name that was dragged through the mud. Even the prosecutor branded the Rev. Jerold Lindner a child molester who decades earlier brutally raped the man on trial in the revenge attack.
But a day after the jury acquitted Lindner’s attacker, Will Lynch’s supporters say there is another way to bring the priest to justice and protect young potential victims. They want District Attorney Jeff Rosen to bring Lindner up on perjury charges for allegedly lying under oath about molesting Lynch and his 4-year-old brother in the mid-1970s. The priest is now back at his bucolic hilltop retirement center in Los Gatos, immune from prosecution because Lynch and other accusers came forward with their molestation allegations after the statute of limitations lapsed.
“If we can’t get justice directly, this is another way we can get him off the street,” Lynch said.
Even though Lindner could only get a maximum of four years in county jail, Lynch said, “It’s better than zero years.”
Rosen is considering the possibility of prosecuting Lindner, but he and legal experts say that would be a difficult task that might not succeed or bring much solace to the victims.
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