Prosecution Rests in Philadelphia Sex Abuse Cover-Up Case

For the past seven weeks, the horrid dirty laundry of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has been thoroughly exposed and the fact that not one, but two Catholic Cardinals had played active roles in covering up the repeated sexual abuse of children and minors brought very much to light.  While the case has garnered quite a bit of attention, it's unfortunate that coverage was placed side by side with stories of the Catholic Church's opposition to same sex marriage and/or Church criticism of Barack Obama in every newspaper in the country.  The Philadelphia trial shows the true face of the Church hierarchy and, at least to me, needs to be used to convince Catholics who prefer to stick their heads in the sand that they are bankrolling a foul institution.  An institution that will not change without the flight of Church members, drops in financial support, and hopefully more criminal prosecutions of members of the Church hierarchy.  The Catholic Church has been allowed to get away with heinous crimes for far too long.  Here are highlights from the New York Times on the prosecution's wrapping up of its case:

After seven weeks of testimony, prosecutors on Thursday rested their case against Msgr. William J. Lynn, the first senior Roman Catholic official in the United States to face criminal charges of covering up sexual abuse by priests and reassigning those suspected of child molesting to unwary new parishes. 

In rulings on Thursday, Judge M. Teresa Sarmina of Common Pleas Court dismissed one of two conspiracy counts against Monsignor Lynn, involving allegations of efforts to protect the Rev. James J. Brennan, a priest who remains a co-defendant in the current trial and is accused of the attempted rape of a child. 

But Judge Sarmina left intact the charges that Monsignor Lynn endangered two minors by failing to remove errant priests and also a second conspiracy charge, that he cooperated with other officials to protect a former priest, Edward V. Avery, who recently pleaded guilty to sex abuse. Monsignor Lynn, who has pleaded not guilty, faces a maximum prison sentence of 10 ½ to 21 years if convicted in the landmark trial. 

Monsignor Lynn was indicted after a scathing grand jury report last year accused him and other senior church officials of playing down credible abuse charges against dozens of priests, and of working to protect the archdiocese from scandal and lawsuits rather than to protect children. 

The prosecutors ended their case after calling dozens of witnesses and offering numerous examples in which, they alleged, Monsignor Lynn and other church officials did not inform parishioners about credible, often multiple abuse charges against individual priests and allowed some of them to continue in the ministry for years. 

The defense team has previously asserted that Monsignor Lynn acted responsibly, passing abuse allegations to his superiors, and that only Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, who died in January, had the authority to reassign priests or remove them. 

 

The prosecutors ended their case with a flourish, allowing jurors to inspect a frayed folder that had been locked in a secret safe for years and was mysteriously discovered and provided to prosecutors only this February, shortly after the cardinal’s death. The folder contained a list, compiled by Monsignor Lynn in 1994 at the request of Cardinal Bevilacqua, of 35 active priests who were credibly charged or confirmed as child molesters. 

Cardinal Bevilacqua later ordered the list to be shredded and, according to the prosecutors, Monsignor Lynn and other officials focused on how to prevent disclosure of archives in future lawsuits against the church. 

One of the priests on that list, Father Avery, now 69, spent six months in a church psychiatric center in 2003, after credible charges that he abused boys. Monsignor Lynn then assigned him to a new parish without warning local officials about his troubled past or insuring follow-up counseling and monitoring, according to prosecutors. Mr. Avery remained in ministry, with unrestricted contact with children, until 2003. 

Father Avery, who later left the priesthood, was originally slated to go on trial with Monsignor Lynn and Father Brennan, but pleaded guilty just before the trial began in March to sexually assaulting an altar boy in 1999 — five years after he was named on Monsignor Lynn’s list. He was sentenced to 2 ½ to 5 years in prison. As part of his plea deal, Father Avery said Monsignor Lynn and other officials had allowed him to stay in ministry, with access to children, despite knowing his history of sexual abuse.

Why any moral person continues to listen to anything said by members of the Church hierarchy baffles me - especially since complicity in the protection of child rapist priest goes all the way up to Pope Benedict XVI.