Jury Selection Begins in Priest Sex Abuse Case

By Joseph A. Slobodzian
Philadelphia Inquirer
January 7, 2013

http://articles.philly.com/2013-01-07/news/36194949_1_grand-jury-report-bernard-shero-sexual-abuse

Prosecution and defense lawyers this morning began the process of finding a jury of 12 Philadelphians to hear the criminal case against a priest and former parochial schoolteacher accused of serially sexually abusing a 10-year-old altar boy from the Northeast in the late 1990s.

A panel of 130 prospective jurors spent the morning completing a long questionnaire to determine what they know of the case against Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero.

By noon, the lawyers and Common Pleas Court Judge Ellen Ceisler had dismissed all but about 75, mostly for personal issues such as vacations, family events and health problems that would prevent them from sitting through an estimated two weeks of testimony.

The remaining jurors return to the Criminal Justice Center courtroom later this afternoon to be questioned individually by Ceisler to select a jury of 12 plus several alternates.

Engelhardt, 66, and Shero, 49, are charged with serially sexually assaulting the boy - identified as "Billy Doe" in the 2011 county grand jury report about clergy sex abuse of children in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia - while both were assigned to St. Jerome's parish in the Northeast.

According to the grand jury report, Billy, now 23, was a fifth-grader at St. Jerome's.

Billy was allegedly first abused by Engelhardt in 1998 after he served an early morning weekday Mass with the priest at St. Jerome's.

A few months later, the grand jury report continued, Billy was accosted by another priest, Rev. Edward Avery, chaplain at nearby Nazareth Hospital who lived at St. Jerome's rectory.

Avery, who pleaded guilty last year to molesting Billy, had a history of sexually abusing children and had been ordered to get treatment for pedophilia at the archdiocesan hospital for priests with sexually and substance abuse problems.

After the summer break, Billy returned to St. Jerome's for sixth grade and was assigned to Shero's classroom.

The grand jury report alleges that one day Shero offered Billy a ride home from school. Instead, Shero allegedly stopped the car, raped the boy and then told Billy to get out of the car and walk home.

Engelhardt, Shero and Avery, now 70 and in prison, were among five people charged as part of the investigation into clergy sex abuse of children in the Philadelphia archdiocese.

The first trial resulting from the grand jury report ended June 22 when a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury found Msgr. William J. Lynn guilty of child endangerment, the first church administrator convicted for a priest's sexual abuse of a child.

Lynn, 62, who as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004 was responsible for investigating allegations against priests, was sentenced to 3 to 6 years for child endangerment. He is appealing his conviction and sentence.

The fifth person charged after the 2011 grand jury report, the Rev. James J. Brennan, 49, will be retried March 6 in the attempted rape of a 14-year-old boy in 1996. Brennan was tried with Lynn but the jury was unable to reach a verdict and a mistrial resulted.