D.a.'s Grand Jury Report Riddled with Errorsralph Cipriano

Big Trial
March 14, 2013

http://www.bigtrial.net/2013/03/district-attorneys-grand-jury-report.html

If the 2011 Grand Jury report on sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was a term paper, the district attorney would have gotten a failing grade for sloppy work habits and more than 20 factual errors.

It's too bad they're not taking questions down at the D.A.'s office right now, because the public has a right to know what went wrong with this grand jury report. But the spokesperson for the D.A.'s office has refused to answer questions all week.

The factual errors in the grand jury report are contradicted by grand jury testimony, trial testimony, and the results of the district attorney's own investigation.

It's a shameful work product. Somebody screwed up.

Let's take a look at what the grand jury report said. It's posted online, so readers can check it out for themselves.

Let's start with the biggest mistake. Eleven times in the grand jury report, the district attorney said that Father James J. Brennan raped 14-year-old Mark Bukowski back in 1996. This excerpt is from pages 11 and 12 of the grand jury report:

Father Brennan, who was now shirtless, insisted that Mark remove his gym shorts and climb into bed with him in only his underwear, which Mark did. Mark attempted to sleep on his side, with his back to Father Brennan, because he was afraid to look at the priest. As Mark lay in that position, Father Brennan hugged him from behind, resting his chin on Mark’s shoulder and pulling the boy closer to him.

When Father Brennan pulled Mark toward him, Mark felt Father Brennan’s erect penis enter his buttocks. Mark began to cry, and asked himself over and over again, “Why is this happening?” as Father Brennan anally raped him. Mark fell asleep that night with Father Brennan’s penis still in his buttocks.

When he testified before the grand jury, here's what Mark Bukowski said:

I got into bed with him [Father Brennan] and he was now shirtless and insisted not in a violent or threatening way that I should remove my gym shorts. So I did, got into the bed and immediately took the position of having my back to him because I didn't want to look at him ...

He began to hug me from behind and rest his chin on my shoulder with his beard scratching my upper neck area. He continually pulled me closer, while moving closer himself with his arms around my upper chest. This time I felt his erect penis between my butt cheeks. My boxers were still on, however, I do not know if he had shorts on. With the way it felt and how aggressive, yet gentle he was, it was if he wanted to pull himself through me and for me to come out the back of him. I remember lastly thinking what the fuck happened tonight and crying myself to sleep with his penis still between my butt cheeks, saying to myself over and over again, why is this happening?

Ok, we can all agree a priest should not be in bed with a 14-year-old boy under any circumstances. A priest should also not be engaging in any conduct remotely close to what Mark Bukowski was describing. However, it's a literary crime for the district attorney to turn what Brennan's lawyer would contemptuously describe as a "savage spooning" into an anal rape if the alleged victim still has his boxer shorts on. And so did the alleged attacker.

Rape would seem to be an anatomical impossibility, right?

Father Brennan was tried last year as a co-defendant with Msgr. William J. Lynn. On the witness stand Mark Bukowski testified that both he and the priest had t-shirts and boxer shorts on the night they spent in the priest's bed.

The grand jury report called for indicting Father Brennan and charging him with rape and involuntary deviant sexual intercourse with a minor. But when the trial began, the rape charge against Father Brennan had been reduced to attempted rape, with no official explanation.

Yet, over and over again in the grand jury report, the district attorney used the words raped and sodomized when referring to what Father Brennan allegedly did to 14-year-old Mark Bukowski:

-- That same summer, Brennan arranged for his sleepover with Mark, and sodomized him. [Page 5, grand jury report].

- As a result of the rape, Mark developed significant psychological and substance abuse problems, and attempted suicide. [page 38].

-- At the time of the rape, Mark was a happy, well-adjusted boy who played several sports and had no problems in school. But the sexual assault by Father Brennan triggered significant psychological problems, including depression, which in turn led to a dramatic weight loss and left him so emotionally damaged that he was at times unable to even to leave his house. [page 38].

-- In addition, the rape led Mark to turn to drugs and alcohol for comfort, and contributed significantly to a substance abuse problem that would affect his performance in school, damage his relationship with his family, and cause a crisis of faith. Mark even went so far as to attempt to kill himself by overdosing on pills before undergoing counseling and beginning to turn his life around. [page 38].

-- Three years after the rape, Father Brennan exposed himself to Mark at a time when Mark’s life was already spiraling out of control. [page 40]

-- Mark’s private records would have been statutorily protected from disclosure during a criminal trial. By handing these over to Father Brennan, Archdiocese officials not only risked making the eventual prosecution of the priest more difficult, they needlessly exposed an already scarred victim to further trauma by making the most private details of his life available to the man who raped him. [page 106].

-- This Grand Jury’s responsibilities are not limited to suggesting criminal charges against those responsible for the rapes and molestations of Billy and Mark. [page 117].

It's hard to imagine a bigger screw-up. The district attorney was writing a grand jury report on sex abuse, and there were just two victims that the D.A. was going to run with, and charge people on -- Mark Bukowski and Billy Doe. The D.A. should have made damn sure whether Mark Bukowski was raped or not.

The correct answer -- no -- is right in Mark Bukowski's own grand jury testimony. Did anyone at the district attorney's office proof-read this document, or fact-check anything?

Let's go back to a previous grand jury passage about Mark Bukowski. In it there's a second error:

-- Three years after the rape, Father Brennan exposed himself to Mark at a time when Mark’s life was already spiraling out of control. [page 40]

At the trial of Father Brennan, Msgr. Kevin Quirk showed up to read a 55-page transcript of a 2008 ecclesiastical inquest of Father Brennan into the record. Msgr. Quirk, a West Virginia priest with a doctorate in canon law, was the canonical judge at the inquest. In the transcript, Bukowski backed off the charge that Father Brennan had exposed himself to Bukowski.

"The accused had withdrawn that part of the allegation," Msgr. Quirk told the jury. Msgr. Quirk testified that Bukowski told him his mind was "scrambled" about the alleged exposure incident, adding, "I'm just saying I don't remember."

Regarding Billy Doe, the grand jury report made several mistakes contradicted by the district attorney's own investigation, such as:

-- That was the beginning of a longer journey. Billy stopped talking with friends and started smoking marijuana. He would often gag and vomit for reasons the doctors could not discern. He checked books out of the library about sexual abuse. By high school he was taking pills, and then heroin. [page 17]

As has been previously reported on this blog, Billy did not check those sex abuse books out of the library; those books were checked out by a female classmate, according to a library card found in the books. When she was interviewed by detectives, the classmate said she had used the books for a school assignment and that she never gave those books to Billy. She told a detective that Billy might have taken the books out of her locker, without her permission.

In the grand jury report, the D.A. criticized Louise Hagner, an archdiocese social worker, for allegedly harassing Billy Doe:

Thus Billy was practically chased out of his house in pursuit of a statement, after repeatedly declining to speak. [page 9].

The grand jury took another shot at Hagner:

The result of Ms. Hagner’s unprofessional, forced interview with a distraught Billy is a document that the Archdiocese and defense attorneys will undoubtedly find useful in trying to cast doubt on Billy’s story. [page 99].

Was Billy Doe forced to talk to Louise Hagner? Was Billy Doe distraught when he talked to Louse Hagner? That's not what Billy Doe told the grand jury.

Billy Doe's story was that he snuck out of the house, against the wishes of his police officer father, and voluntarily "hopped" in the car with Louise Hagner and a colleague. Billy Doe also testified to the grand jury that far from feeling distraught when he talked to Louise Hagner, "I was high out of my mind" on heroin:

Q. After they [archdiocese social workers] called you on your cell phone and told you they wanted to meet, what happened after that?

A. I agreed. I told my father. He said he didn't want them coming over the house ...

Q. So what happened after that?

A. They [archdiocese social workers] ended up coming to the house and knocked on the door. He [Billy's father] wouldn't let me answer. So I snuck out and went and talked to them in the car.

Q. Do you recall why you snuck out and went against your dad to go talk to them?

A. ... I was wasted. I was high out of my mind ...

Q. What drug were you on?

A. Heroin.

Q. So you were on heroin. Do you recall what happened after you went outside?

A. I went and I hopped in the car with this lady and she drove down the street a little bit and parked the car.

Q. Did she identify herself to you? Did she say where she was coming from?

A. I remember her saying she was from the Archdiocese, victim services.

The grand jury report contains others mistakes involving Billy Doe:

-- This Grand Jury investigation began with the tearful testimony of “Billy.” Billy was a 10-year-old student in Barbara Mosakowski’s fifth-grade class at St. Jerome School in Philadelphia when two priests molested and orally sodomized him during the 1998-99 school year. Billy had signed up to be an altar boy at St. Jerome Church because his brother, who was three years older, had been one. He also participated in the “maintenance department” of the school’s bell choir, meaning that he took the bells out of their cases before choir practice and put them away at the end. [page 13].

As reported previously on this blog, detectives interviewed the music director at St. Jerome's and another teacher who had performed in the bell choir since its inception. The two witnesses told the detectives the same story: only eighth grade boys were allowed to be members of the bell choir maintenance crew because the bells, bell cases and tables that the bells rested on were so heavy. Not 10-year-old fifth grade boys like Billy.

The teacher and the music director also said that the maintenance crew set up the bells and then left. It was the members of the bell choir who were responsible for putting way the bells and equipment after the concert was over. The bell choir maintenance crew was long gone by this time, the teacher and music director told detectives.

Here's another couple of facts in the grand jury report that relied on Billy Doe's stories that were subsequently contradicted by the district attorney's own investigation:

-- Billy’s first uncomfortable encounter with a priest took place after he served an early morning weekday Mass with Rev. Charles Engelhardt. While Billy was cleaning up in the church sacristy, Father Engelhardt caught him drinking some of the leftover wine. The priest did not scold the 10-year-old altar boy. Instead, he poured him more of the sacramental wine and began asking him personal questions, such as whether he had a girlfriend. [page 13].

Billy's older brother, who was an altar boy and a sexton, told detectives that it was the job of the sextons to take care of the left-over communion wine after mass, and not the altar boys. Several priests from St. Jerome's told detectives the same story.

Billy's story about serving at an early morning weekday Mass was contradicted by extensive monthly calendars that his mother kept, which showed that Billy did not serve as an altar boy during an early morning Mass for the entire 1998-99 school year he was enrolled in fifth grade at St. Jerome's Church.

Here's some more sloppy work by the District Attorney:

Even on its own, Billy’s testimony regarding the abuse by those men, which we have found highly credible, is sufficient to establish each of those offenses under Pennsylvania law. Moreover, we note that Billy’s testimony is strongly corroborated both by his contemporaneous medical complaints and by Father Avery’s established history of sexual abuse.

As has been reported on this blog, Father Avery's history as a sexual offender proved just the opposite, that the story described by Billy Doe did not fit into Avery's well-established pattern as a molester.

As to whether Billy was a credible witness or not, that's a matter of opinion taken as fact by the district attorney in the grand jury report. Billy's drug counselor did not think Billy's story was credible. Again, as has been reported on this blog, Billy's story was contradicted by 30 witnesses interviewed by detectives. They included priests, nuns, teachers and the music director at St. Jerome's, and Billy's own older brother. In addition, calendars kept by his own mother contradicted Billy, as did church records.

Is that a credible witness?

Here's another misstatement of grand jury testimony:

-- Billy’s mother also told us of a dramatic change in her son’s personality that coincided with the abuse. His friends and their parents also noticed this personality change. Billy’s mother watched as her friendly, happy, sociable son turned into a lonely, sullen boy. He no longer played sports or socialized with his friends. He separated himself, and began to smoke marijuana at age 11. By the time Billy was in high school, he was abusing prescription painkillers, and eventually he graduated to heroin. [page 17].

That's not what Billy's mother told the grand jury. She testified that she noticed a dramatic change in her son when he was a 14-year-old freshman in high school, not when he was at St. Jerome's:

Q. Did there come a time when you noticed a change in [Billy's] behavior?

A. Yes. At age 14, as he entered high school, freshman year at high school, he wasn't the same child. He was very troubling to us.

Q. Ok. Prior to that, what was his personality?

A. He was basically a very pleasant, active, happy person prior to that and he was defined by some people as either Dennis the Menace or the All-American boy up to that point.

Q. Ok. So he's leaving St. Jerome's and entering into high school?

A. Uh-huh.

This is either incredibly sloppy work, or a willful and deceitful twisting of the facts to fit a preconceived story line.

Aside from the outright mistakes in the grand jury report, there are also some highly suspect stories trotted out as facts that came straight from the mouth of Billy Doe.

For example, the grand jury report ran with Billy Doe's story that Father Charles Engelhardt and Father Edward Avery used the code word "sessions" to describe their rapes of Billy Doe. Three times in the grand jury report, the district attorney asserts that two priests used the word "sessions" as a code word for child rape.

But when the district attorney sent detectives out to investigate Billy Doe's story, after a grand jury report had been issued and five defendants had been indicted and arrested, the detectives found a far more likely origin for the word "sessions" -- it was a term used by drug counselors at one of Billy Doe's 23 drug rehabs.

The district attorney's grand jury report on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is inexcusably sloppy work. That's on top of a shoddy "historic" prosecution that put indictments and arrests ahead of investigation.

District Attorney Seth Williams should come out of hiding and explain to the public why his grand jury report on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia contained so many errors. He also should explain why his prosecution of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia perverted the normal logical order of an investigation to advance an incredible story line told by a non-credible witness.