Main Line
May 9, 2011
http://mainlinemedianews.com/articles/2011/05/09/main_line_suburban_life/news/doc4dc8144ed9fdf010197799.txt
[the lawsuit]
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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Phoenix man has sued the Philadelphia archdiocese over the actions of a priest named as an alleged serial abuser in a 2005 grand jury report.
The lawsuit filed Monday involves former priest Robert L. Brennan.
The explosive 2005 grand jury report on priest abuse devotes an entire section to Brennan. The report says the archdiocese had reports he engaged in suspicious behavior with more than 20 from four parishes, but moved him from parish to parish nonetheless.
Church-abuse lawyer Jeff Anderson says his 32-year-old client has been hospitalized repeatedly and attempted suicide since the 1993-94 abuse. Anderson says his client was then a 13-year-old old altar boy at Resurrection Parish.
The archdiocese isn't commenting on the lawsuit. Brennan, now living in Perryville, Md., does not have a listed number.
The suit, being filed on behalf of a man now living in Phoenix who says he was sexually abused by Brennan while at the Rhawnhurst parish between 1993 and 1994, was filed against Cardinals Anthony Bevilacqua and Justin Rigali, Msgr. William Lynn and Father Robert Brennan of Resurrection of Our Lord parish.
Lynn, a a former parochial vicar of St. Katharine of Siena Parish in the Wayne section of Radnor, was accused by a grand jury with endangering the welfare of children while he was responsible for investigating clerical sexual abuse from 1992 until 2004 under former Philadelphia Archbishop Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua.
A statement from lawyers Marci Hamilton, Dan Monahan and Jeff Anderson says the actions of Bevilacqua "figure large in allowing abuse" at the Northeast school.
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