PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Hamilton Spectator (Canada)
By Maryclaire Dale
PHILADELPHIA Lawyers for a Roman Catholic church official will demand his immediate release from prison Monday after an appeals court overturned his conviction in a novel priest-abuse case aimed squarely at the church hierarchy in Philadelphia.
Monsignor William Lynn, 62, is the first Catholic official ever prosecuted over his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints. He has served 18 months of the three- to six-year sentence handed down by a judge who said he helped predators remain in ministry, endangering new victims.
But the Superior Court threw out the conviction Thursday, ruling that the state’s child-endangerment law did not apply in the late 1990s to church supervisors like Lynn. The Superior Court said the case never should have been filed.
“The laws at that time were inadequate to deal with this kind of problem. And I think that the judge and the prosecutor stretched the law, trying to find some way to punish somebody,” Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit theologian and senior analyst with the National Catholic Reporter, said Friday. “They stretched the law too far, in the opinion of the appeals court.”
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