PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial
MONDAY, MARCH 10, 2014
By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net
At 10:15 a.m. this morning in Courtroom 1102, Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright read the details of the sex crimes that Father Andrew McCormick is charged with.
The jury, beginning their second day of deliberations, had asked the judge for a read back on the charges.
Judge Bright began with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, which in this case involved oral sex with a minor. “The slightest degree of penetration is sufficient,” the judge told the jury. She went on for ten minutes to detail the elements of that crime, along with four other charges against the priest: sexual assault, endangering the welfare of a child, indecent assault of a child, and corrupting the morals of a minor.
In the second row of the courtroom, four nuns in full habits weren’t listening to the gory details. Instead, they had their heads bowed, they held their rosary beads while they silently prayed for “Father Andy.”
“It’s atrocious to have it associated with him,” Sister Jacinta Miryam Hanley said of the sex crimes that Father Andy is accused of. The alleged victim in this case is a former 10-year-old altar boy who said that 17 years ago, Father Andy assaulted him in the rectory of St. John Cantius Church in Bridesburg.
When the jury left the courtroom to deliberate, the nuns continued their prayer vigil outside in the hallway with Father Andy on the 11th floor of the Criminal Justice Center. The nuns, who were saying the rosary, were joined by other supporters of the priest.
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