By David O'Reilly
Philadelphia Inquirer
July 30, 2011
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/126437728.html
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| Msgr. William J. Lynn arriving in court. He is the first member of the Catholic hierarchy in the nation to be charged with child endangerment. |
Clearing the way for what will be a landmark sex-abuse case, a judge ruled Friday that Msgr. William J. Lynn, former head of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's clergy office, must stand trial on a charge of conspiracy to endanger the welfare of children.
Lynn, 60, is the highest-ranking member of a Roman Catholic diocese in the United States ever to face criminal prosecution over allegedly enabling and protecting abusive clergy.
The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office contends that Lynn recommended the assignments of priests he knew were accused of inappropriate behavior with minors, and helped them keep their histories secret. Lynn served as clergy secretary, primarily for Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, from 1992 to 2004.
Common Pleas Court Judge Lillian Ransom also ruled Friday that Lynn would stand trial alongside three current or former priests and an ex-teacher charged with sexually assaulting two boys, then 10 and 14, in the 1990s.
Her decisions dealt a major setback to Lynn, whose attorneys had argued that he had broken no laws. They asserted that prosecutors had charged him under a 2007 child-endangerment law that went into effect three years after he left the clergy office to become pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Downingtown.
Ransom said prosecutors had found sufficient evidence that Lynn broke applicable laws. He is not charged with sexual assault of any minor, nor with assigning priests to intentionally cause sexual abuse.
In February, a Philadelphia grand jury recommended charges against Lynn and the others after a lengthy investigation into abuse claims by the two alleged victims.
One plaintiff, now 23, says he was shown pornography and orally sodomized by the Rev. Charles Engelhardt in 1998 while a 10-year-old altar boy at St. Jerome Parish in Northeast Philadelphia.
He also says that the Rev. Edward Avery, who lived at St. Jerome, approached him several weeks later, told the boy he had heard about his "sessions" with Engelhardt, and forced him to perform oral sex.
He further alleges that the following year, when he was a sixth grader at St. Jerome's parish school, teacher Bernard Shero offered him a ride home one day but instead took him to a park, where he sodomized and raped him and left him to walk home.
The other plaintiff, now 29, says the Rev. James Brennan, then a parish priest on leave, raped him in 1996 during a sleepover at Brennan's apartment when he was 14.
All the defendants deny the charges. Brennan and Avery are no longer priests.
According to the 2011 grand jury report, Lynn knew of abuse complaints against Avery and Brennan before the assaults in question, and conspired with them to keep those accusations secret.
While the grand jury did not recommend conspiracy charges against the five, the District Attorney's Office added them in March. All the defense attorneys objected and asked the court to drop the conspiracy charges. Ransom did so only in the case of Shero, since Lynn played no role in his employment at St. Jerome's school.
Defense attorneys and prosecutors would not comment Friday on the judge's rulings because there is a gag order on the case.
In briefs and in Friday's oral arguments, Lynn's attorneys, Thomas Bergstrom and Jeffrey Lindy, said prosecutors had improperly charged Lynn under a definition of child endangerment that did not become Pennsylvania law until 2007.
"Let's not forget that in 2005, the D.A.'s Office took an exactly opposite position," Bergstrom told Ransom.
In a 2005 grand jury report on clergy sex abuse in the archdiocese, Bergstrom noted, prosecutors lamented that the child-endangerment law was, they wrote, "too narrow to support a successful prosecution of the decision-makers who were running the archdiocese."
Although the legislature changed the law to include employers and supervisors of child abusers under the child endangerment law, "it's clear as a bell," Bergstrom told the judge, that the 2007 changes "did not apply and do not apply" to any decisions Lynn made.
Bergstrom took the unusual step of asking Ransom to seek a ruling from the state Supreme Court in advance of trial as to whether prosecutors were charging Lynn properly.
But after some discussion, Ransom denied the request. Such arguments could be made, she said, if the defendants appeal the verdicts.
Although no trial date has been set, court documents indicated that Common Pleas Court Judge Teresa Sarmina, an 11-year member of the bench, will oversee it.
Ransom's decision Friday to let stand the conspiracy and endangerment charges against Lynn is a breakthrough for the District Attorney's Office, which has for years voiced frustration that it could not hold archdiocesan leaders accountable.
Although the 2005 grand-jury report identified at least 63 priests here as having been credibly accused of abuse, prosecutors were unable to charge any clergy with crimes because the statute of limitations on all the assaults had expired.
The two plaintiffs in the current case filed criminal charges in time, allowing prosecutors to link Lynn to what they call "fresh" crimes. They have since brought civil suits against archdiocesan officials.
In the criminal case, for the child-endangerment charges to rise to the level of felony, prosecutors must show that Lynn colluded with others over a long time to put children, even unintentionally, in harm's way. As evidence, they introduced on July 22 thousands of pages of grand-jury testimony that Lynn, two bishops, several accused priests, and Bevilacqua gave between 2002 and 2004.
The Inquirer obtained the Bevilacqua transcripts hours after they were filed, and published a story about them Sunday.
When reporters returned to the courthouse Monday, they discovered that Ransom had impounded all the transcripts and barred them from public view.
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