PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
Joseph A. Slobodzian, Inquirer Staff Writer
Posted: Thursday, January 17, 2013
Lawyers for a priest and a former parochial-school teacher attacked the credibility Wednesday of a 24-year-old Northeast Philadelphia man who says the pair sexually assaulted him when he was a 10-year-old altar boy.
The witness – The Inquirer does not identify victims of alleged sexual assault – was questioned for almost four hours by lawyers for the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero.
On Tuesday, the witness told the Common Pleas Court jury that serial sexual assaults by Engelhardt, another priest, and Shero while he was a fifth grader at St. Jerome’s parish school shattered his childhood and propelled him into a life of petty crime and drug addiction.
Defense attorneys Burton A. Rose and Michael McGovern argued that the assaults never happened.
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