PHILADELPHIA (PA)
National Catholic Reporter
Brian Roewe | Jan. 25, 2016
Last week Newsweek published a cover story from veteran Philadelphia journalist Ralph Cipriano that dives even deeper into the credibility of an alleged victim of clergy sexual abuse that resulted in landing three priests and one teacher in prison.
In June 2012, Msgr. William Lynn became the first U.S. church official convicted for his handling of abuse allegations. Seven months later, a jury found Fr. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero guilty sexually assaulting a former altar boy, the same whom former priest Edward Avery had previously pleaded guilty of sexually assaulting. The altar boy at the center of each of the four convictions was “Billy Doe,” the prosecution’s star witness in an apparent landmark trial situated in the Philadelphia archdiocese.
Flash forward to last week. Under the scathing headline “Catholic Guilt? The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy Behind a Lurid Rape Case” Cipriano recaps for Newsweek the priests’ cases and the credibility of Billy Doe — whose actual name is Daniel Gallagher — in addition to revealing new information from recent reports, gathered ahead of civil suits that have since been dropped, that raises new questions about the reliability of his story.
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