Ex-priest Recants, Throwing Wrench into Sex-abuse Case

By Mensah M. Dean
Philadelphia Daily News
January 18, 2013

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20130118_Ex-priest_recants__throwing_wrench_into_sex-abuse_case.html

A DEFROCKED Catholic priest who pleaded guilty last year to sexually assaulting an altar boy recanted his guilty plea on the witness stand Wednesday, dealing a blow to prosecutors making a case against two other men on trial for allegedly molesting the same boy.

Defrocked priest Edward Avery, 70, who is serving a 2 1/2-to-5-year state prison sentence, denied touching or even knowing the victim. Avery had been expected to buttress the prosecution's case against Rev. Charles Engelhardt, 66, and ex-teacher Bernard Shero, 49, who are being tried in Common Pleas Court for allegedly raping a St. Jerome Parish altar boy in 1998 and 2000, respectively.

Although Avery pleaded guilty to assaulting the boy before his own trial began, and prosecutors have evidence that he assaulted other young men, Avery claimed innocence Thursday.

The alleged victim, now 24, testified Tuesday that Avery forced him to engage in sex acts in a St. Jerome storage closet on two occasions in 1999.

The man said that he was in "disbelief, shock," when Avery first approached him and declared that their sex "sessions," such as those the boy had had with Engelhardt, would soon begin.

During the first encounter, the man told the jury, Avery made him strip naked to music coming from a small CD player.

"He sat there with this eerie smile, like he wouldn't want to be anywhere else," the man said of Avery.

During that incident, the man said, Avery performed oral sex on him and shoved his finger in his anus.

Although the alleged victim's testimony may be hard for the trial's two defense attorneys to overcome with some jurors, attorney Thomas Bergstrom, who represents convicted priest William Lynn, seized on Avery's testimony.

Bergstrom said that based on Thursday's trial development, he was likely to seek bail in Superior Court for Lynn, 62, who was convicted in June of covering up sexual abuse by clergy in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Lynn, a monsignor in charge of handling clergy-abuse allegations, is serving a three-to-six-year state-prison sentence. Avery was to be tried with Lynn but pleaded guilty instead.

Bergstrom said that Avery's attorney told him in September that the priest had told prosecutors that he was not guilty but that he took a plea deal only to avoid a longer prison sentence.

"If what he said is true, that's a serious problem for the commonwealth and we have to explore that," said Bergstrom, who added that he might ask Lynn's trial judge for a new trial.

The attorneys involved in the current trial are under a gag order and cannot talk with reporters outside court. The trial was to resume Friday.