Philly priest on trial in single-accuser case

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Beaumont Enterprise

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Jury selection is getting under way in a priest-abuse case prompted by news accounts of the Penn State and Philadelphia archdiocese sex-abuse trials.

The accuser says he contacted authorities in 2012 after seeing those child sex-abuse cases in the news.

He says that the Rev. Andrew McCormick fondled him and performed a sex act when he was an altar boy in northeast Philadelphia in 1997.

A judge had thrown out the most serious felony charges — sexual assault and deviant intercourse — after finding the accuser’s pretrial testimony did not match those crimes.

But prosecutors successfully appealed.

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