PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
By Ralph Cipriano
for bigtrial.net
“Billy Doe” never underwent any drastic personality change while attending St. Jerome Catholic School.
That was the testimony today of five of Billy’s former teachers from St. Jerome’s who paraded through the witness stand as the defense began presenting its case at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial.
Billy Doe is the pseudonym in the 2011 Philadelphia grand jury report for a ten-year-old altar boy who was allegedly raped in fifth grade by two priests who lived in the St. Jerome rectory — Father Edward V. Avery and Father Charles Engelhardt. The following year, Billy was allegedly raped by his sixth grade teacher at St. Jerome’s, Bernard Shero, after the teacher supposedly offered Billy a ride home.
The prosecution has alleged that after being raped by three predators, Billy changed from a happy-go-lucky extrovert into a dark, depressed loner. But that’s not what the faculty at St. Jerome’s saw.
“He was a happy child,” said Joann Hayes, a teacher at St. Jerome’s who taught Billy art and music from second grade through eighth grade. “I never had any problems with him,” Hayes said. She remembered Billy as part of the cast in a 1999 school musical, “Christmas Show Around The World.”
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