Monsignor Lynn Sentenced to 3-6 Years for Catholic Child-Sex-Abuse

By Charlie Wells
New York Daily News
July 25, 2012

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/monsignor-lynn-sentenced-3-6-years-catholic-child-sex-abuse-article-1.1121189

Monsignor William Lynn walks to the Criminal Justice Center before a scheduled verdict reading, Friday, June 22, 2012, in Philadelphia. Lynn is the first U.S. church official charged for allegedly helping an archdiocese cover up abuse claims. He has received a 3-to-6 year sentence.

The sentencing of Monsignor William J. Lynn of Philadelphia marks the first time a U.S. Roman Catholic official has been given a prison sentence for covering up child abuse in the Church. The judge told Lynn he had let 'monsters...destroy the souls of children.'

The first U.S. Roman Catholic official convicted of covering up child sexual abuse inside the Church was sentenced Tuesday to 3-to-6 years in prison.

Judge M. Teresa Sarmina handed down Monsignor William J. Lynn's sentence, just shy of the maximum seven-year penalty prosecutors had sought.

Sarmina told Lynn that he had permitted "monsters in clerical garb ... to destroy the souls of children, to whom you turned a hard heart."

"You knew full well what was right, Monsignor Lynn, but you chose wrong," Sarmina said.

For a dozen years, Lynn worked as a clerical secretary and was one of the most prominent officials in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. He directed hundreds of priests for the Church.

Lynn was convicted June 22 on a single count of endangering the welfare of a child and has been in jail since that time with a revoked bail.

Lynn was charged with placing Priests James J. Brennan and Edward Avery in parishes despite the fact that signs suggested they might abuse children, according to the Washington Post.

"I believe that what Lynn did was done by just about every diocese," Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a website tracking cases of abuse, said to NBCPhiladelphia.com. "In most cases, I think the vicar general was well informed, and also the bishop."

According to McKiernan's group, over 500 priests have been convicted of abuse.

As for Lynn, prosecutors were not at a loss for harsh words.

"His active, even eager execution of archdiocese policies - carried out in the face of victims' vivid suffering, and employing constant deceit - required a more amoral character, a striving to please his bosses no matter how sinister the business," they wrote in a sentencing memo obtained by CBS News and filed Friday. "At any time during those 12 years, he could have had a moment of conscience."

For their part, the Monsignor's lawyers wrote in their own memo that Tuesday's sentence was "cruel and unusual."

"The seven-year maximum sentence that the commonwealth advocates would serve no purpose at all," they wrote Friday.