5 Jurors Selected in Priest-Abuse Case

By Mensah M. Dean
Philadelphia Daily News
February 28, 2012

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/140653243.html

THE FIRST FIVE jurors were selected yesterday in the child-sexual-abuse trial of three Philadelphia Catholic priests.

Jury selection was scheduled to resume this morning, with 30 more potential jurors to be interviewed, Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina said last night.

Earlier in the day, Sarmina rejected a defense motion requesting that child-endangerment charges be dropped against a former Catholic church official due to the discovery of new evidence.

She ruled after prosecutors asserted that the new evidence actually will help them prove the guilt of Monsignor William Lynn.

Lynn, 61, is accused of enabling two priests to sexually assault altar boys by transferring them to new parish assignments even though he was aware that the priests were dangerous.

The Rev. James Brennan, 48, and ex-priest Edward Avery, 69, are charged with raping boys in the 1990s. They will be tried with Lynn, whose job was to investigate allegations of priests' sexual misconduct as secretary for clergy, from 1992 to 2004.

On Friday, Lynn's defense team asserted in a filing that a newly discovered archdiocesan memo from 1994 indicated that then-church leader Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua ordered the shredding of a list that Lynn had compiled of 35 priests suspected of sexual misconduct with children.

Lynn's attorneys contend that the memo proves that Lynn was trying to address the predator-priests problem while Bevilacqua was trying to cover it up. Bevilacqua, who led the region's Catholics from 1988 to 2003, died last month at age 88.

But prosecutors ridiculed the defense filing as being filled with falsehoods that will help them prosecute Lynn and Avery.

"The newly turned-over documents, which were found in a safe in the Office of Clergy after Lynn left that office, are in fact the equivalent of a smoking gun for the prosecution," the prosecutors wrote in their motion.

"They demonstrate that Lynn had determined in early 1994 that co-defendant Edward Avery was "guilty" of sexually abusing a child, but still chose to enable his continued ministry to children.

Contact: deanm@phillynews.com