Victim Testifies in Child Sexual Abuse Trial of Pa Catholic Monsignor

By Bridgette P. Lavictoire
Lez Get Real
April 26, 2012

http://lezgetreal.com/2012/04/victim-testifies-in-child-sexual-abuse-trial-of-pa-catholic-monsignor/


The Roman Catholic Church has been waging a war against women lately, thinking that their push to enforce absolute conformity will rebuild their problems. This has to do with what they are trying to get away from- the child sexual abuse scandal.

On Wednesday, a young man told a jury about how he was sexually assaulted as an altar boy by two priests in Philadelphia. The young man turned to drugs beginning at age 11 in order to try and deal with the abuse. He has tried drug treatment almost two dozen times in order to deal with the addictions to painkillers, heroin and other drugs. He was the son of a police officer.

According to the young man, parish priest Edward Avery raped him twice after Mass back in 1999. At the time, he was ten. He is testifying in the trial of Monsignor William Lynn, a former secretary for clergy at the Philadelphia archdiocese. Avery has pled guilty to the crimes leveled against him, but that has not been told to the jurors. Defense lawyers did not cross-examine the accuser. Prior to the trial, the lawyers attacked his account of the attacks. Defense lawyers may have chosen to not cross-examine due to the fact that the judge threatened to allow the jury to find out about Avery's plea.

According to the Edge, the jury did not "hear the witness say he had also been raped by his fifth-grade teacher from the parish school, as he alleged in his 2010 grand jury testimony.

"One juror fought back tears as the witness described closed-door "sessions" with Avery."

The Edge also noted that "The young man – who has brooding eyes, a buzz cut and closely-cropped facial hair – came to court in a dark suit and tie. Prosecutors earlier showed school photographs of him as a sunny, slightly-built boy in a parochial school uniform and as an altar boy, sporting a floor-length white cassock and gold cross."

According to the young man, Avery put on church music, made him do a striptease and then engaged in mutual oral sex and masturbation in the anteroom inside St. Jerome's Church in northeastern Philadelphia. He did not tell anyone until years later. According to his testimony "I thought I did something wrong – and it's a priest. I didn't think anyone would believe me."