PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
By Ralph Cipriano
for bigtrial.net
Even the district attorney was surprised.
“I’m overjoyed; I did not expect it,” District Attorney Seth Williams told reporters today after a jury convicted Father Charles Engelhardt and former Catholic lay teacher Bernard Shero on nine of ten counts in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse case.
Given the way “the victim in this case” was “vilified” and subjected to lengthy cross-examination, Williams said, he would have understood if the jury had reached another conclusion, say an acquittal or a hung jury, and not the verdict that had the district attorney beaming.
Williams talked about the suffering of the victim, “Billy Doe,” the former 10-year-old altar boy who was “passed from priest to priest to teacher” for alleged sex sessions in a sacristy, a church supply closet, and the back seat of Shero’s car. Engelhardt faces a maximum sentence of 37 years in prison, Shero, a maximum of 57 years, when both men are sentenced on March 18.
As far as the DA was concerned, however, the judge can’t give the two defendants enough time. The district attorney at today’s press conference also castigated the archdiocese for its official response to the triple rape of Billy Doe. “They protect them,” Williams said of the convicted rapists, “and then they “cover up. It’s disgusting.”
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