By Tracey Kaplan
Mercury News
December 6, 2010
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_16792429?nclick_check=1
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| FILE -- Will Lynch, left, stands by his attorney Pat Harris as Harris talks to the media outside of Santa Clara County Hall of Justice after his arraignment, Friday, Nov. 12, 2010. Lynch is charged with savagely beating Rev. Jerold Lindner. Lynch has accused Lindner of sexually abusing and torturing him and his brother in 1975 when they attended a church sponsored camping trip in the Santa Cruz mountains. Lynch, angered all these years that Lindner has never been charged, allegedly lured Lindner to meet him in the lobby of a Los Gatos retirement home in May and savagely beat the Jesuit priest as horrified onlookers watched. |
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| FILE -- Will Lynch, left, and his attorney Pat Harris, right, leave from Santa Clara County Hall of Justice after his arraignment, Friday, Nov. 12, 2010. Lynch is charged with savagely beating Rev. Jerold Lindner. Lynch has accused Lindner of sexually abusing and torturing him and his brother in 1975 when they attended a church sponsored camping trip in the Santa Cruz mountains. Lynch, angered all these years that Lindner has never been charged, allegedly lured Lindner to meet him in the lobby of a Los Gatos retirement home in May and savagely beat the Jesuit priest as horrified onlookers watched. |
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| FILE -- Will Lynch, left, stands by his attorney Pat Harris, right, as Harris talks to the media outside of Santa Clara County Hall of Justice after his arraignment, Friday, Nov. 12, 2010. Lynch is charged with savagely beating Rev. Jerold Lindner. Lynch has accused Lindner of sexually abusing and torturing him and his brother in 1975 when they attended a church sponsored camping trip in the Santa Cruz mountains. Lynch, angered all these years that Lindner has never been charged, allegedly lured Lindner to meet him in the lobby of a Los Gatos retirement home in May and savagely beat the Jesuit priest as horrified onlookers watched. |
Will Lynch, who says he was sexually abused as a child, is finally getting his day in court -- but not the way he hoped.
He's the one who must appear before a judge today on criminal charges, not the Jesuit priest he says raped him and his brother when they were little boys. Prosecutors were barred from charging the Rev. Jerome Lindner with child molestation, even though the Catholic Church eventually paid the brothers a settlement, because by the time Lynch reported the abuse -- about two decades after it occurred -- the six-year statute of limitations in effect at the time of the alleged sex assault had run out.
Lynch now faces an assault charge on suspicion of tracking down Lindner and severely pummeling him in May in a bout of revenge against the priest. The case has led to passionate debate and called attention to the thorny legal issue of how long victims who were assaulted as children -- and often intimidated into silence -- have to seek justice in criminal court.
Under current California law, the amount of time prosecutors have to file child molestation charges depends on two factors: when the abuse occurred and how severe it was. The Legislature approved longer time periods in the 1990s and 2005 for certain victims, but they don't help Lynch because his alleged molestation took place in the early 1970s, before the new time limits kicked in.
"Getting statutes of limitation eliminated is absolutely the No. 1 legislative priority for survivors everywhere," said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. "Our current system of justice encourages predators and their co-workers and supervisors to conceal their crimes and destroy evidence in hopes of running out the clock."
State Sen. Elaine Alquist, D-Santa Clara, has led the effort to change the law. Under one of her bills, prosecutors have until a victim is 28 years old to file charges if the assault happened after 1999. Under other circumstances -- where there is substantial sexual misconduct and corroboration -- the victim could report the crime at any age and prosecutors have a year to file as long as the abuse took place after 1987.
Most victims groups want California to eliminate the limits entirely, as 24 other states have done, including New York.
But defense attorneys here say the current standard is a compromise that protects the innocent from false or unprovable accusations. Among other notorious cases, they cite the McMartin preschool prosecution in Southern California, which involved dozens of children, lasted more than six years and never resulted in a conviction. When the charges were dropped against the preschool operators in 1990, it had been the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history.
A long passage of time between when a molestation occurs and when it is reported can erode memories or mean witnesses are unavailable, the attorneys argue. Often, there's no longer signs of trauma or other physical evidence, making it a credibility contest between the victim and the accused.
"An allegation of sexual misconduct can ruin lives," said Pamela King, a San Bernardino attorney on the board of directors of the California Public Defenders Association.
Jorge Ramirez, president of MaleSurvivor, a nonprofit dedicated to overcoming the sexual victimization of boys and men, said boys in particular are reluctant to report abuse. For one, boys are taught that they are not supposed to be victims or even vulnerable. According to the American Medical Association, "the sexual abuse of boys is common, underreported, underrecognized and understated."
"You don't understand a crime was committed against you until your late 30s, early 40s and beyond," said Ramirez, who lives in Aptos.
In Lynch's case, according to his lawyer Pat Harris, the priest threatened he would "skin their sister" if he or his brother reported the abuse. Lynch and his brother, who were 7 and 5 at the time of the alleged abuse, have said they were raped and forced to have oral sex with each other during camping trips to Portola State Park while Lindner -- a spiritual adviser at the Christian camp -- looked on. Lindner has been accused of abuse by nearly a dozen people, including his own sister and brother.
Lynch and his brother sued in 1997 and received a $625,000 settlement from the Jesuits. Witnesses to the attack on Lindner at his Los Gatos retirement home said the assailant repeatedly yelled, "Turn yourself in."
Clohessy of SNAP noted that there is no statute of limitations on murder, and that the government pursues Nazis and civil-rights-era killers despite the passage of time. He contends that serial pedophiles often continue to molest children and are thus a worse public safety threat.
But even fervent advocates like Alquist, who has been working for at least a decade to get the statutes extended further or eliminated, have given up for the time being because the state is broke and facing a court order to reduce the population of its overcrowded prisons.
Lynch himself plans to wring satisfaction out of the criminal justice system anyway -- albeit as a defendant, not a star witness for the prosecution.
"Will is very resolute, he's going to have his day in court," Harris said. "I can almost guarantee he'll be on the stand."
Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482 & tkaplan@mercurynews.com.
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