PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
BEN FINLEY AND ALLISON STEELE, INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
LAST UPDATED: Thursday, December 26, 2013
A state appeals court on Thursday reversed the conviction of Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former Archdiocese of Philadelphia administrator who became the first church official nationwide to be tried for covering up child sex abuse by priests.
In a 43-page opinion, a three-judge Superior Court panel wrote that prosecutors had misapplied the state’s child endangerment law by claiming Lynn, as the archdiocese secretary for clery, was responsible for abuse because he supervised a priest who abused a child.
The court wrote that the law, as it was written during Lynn’s tenure in the 1990s and early 2000s, only held accountable people who directly supervised children.
The court also found that Lynn, now 63, could not be an accomplice to such abuse because there was no proof he had specific knowledge that a priest was planning or preparing to assault children.
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