PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By John P. Martin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The lawyer for an Archdiocese of Philadelphia priest charged with trying to rape a 14-year boy battled again Tuesday with the priest’s accuser, hammering him over discrepancies in his account and suggesting the teen concocted the allegation because his mother had been spending so much time with the cleric.
“What better way to get the subject of her attention out of your life than to come up with a story?” attorney William Brennan asked.
As he did when he first took the stand Wednesday, the 30-year-old Bucks County man pushed back.
He called the lawyer’s cross-examination “pathetic” and accused him of quibbling over insignificant details, such as whether the priest, the Rev. James J. Brennan, used a laptop or desktop computer to show him pornography before allegedly assaulting him one night in 1996.
On the details that matter, the accuser said, he has never wavered.
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