PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial
Monday, March 4, 2013
By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net
It’s a lingering mystery from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trials — where did the term “sessions” come from?
In the 2011 grand jury report, “sessions” is the code name that two predator priests used for having sex with a 10-year-old altar boy known as “Billy Doe.”
But the two priests in question — Father Charles Engelhardt and former priest Edward V. Avery — went off to their jail cells telling their lawyers that they had never used that word before and had no idea where it came from.
“He [Engelhardt] said that’s a phrase that’s been put in my mouth, it’s been put in Avery’s mouth,” defense lawyer Michael J. McGovern remembered his client telling him. “That’s a term I’ve never used,”the priest told his lawyer. Furthermore, “He [Engelhardt] has never heard a priest use that phrase,”McGovern said.
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