2 Priests Sentenced to Long Prison Terms in Abuse Case

By Dana Difilippo
Philadelphia Daily News
June 13, 2013

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130613_2_priests_sentenced_to_long_prison_terms_in_abuse_case.html

TOM GRALISH / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Ex-teacher Bernard Shero, in 2011 photo, was sentenced to eight to 16 years.

THEY'D BEEN convicted and stood before their judge yesterday for sentencing.

And still, the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero - a Catholic priest and former parochial- school teacher convicted in January of sexually abusing a 10-year-old altar boy - avowed their innocence.

"I denied even knowing the accuser," said Engelhardt, 66, remembering his arrest. "Even after he appeared in this courthouse, I have no recollection of him."

Shero, 50, said he was equally mystified by the student's claims, and Shero's mother told Common Pleas Judge Ellen Ceisler that Shero's thick eyeglasses and awkward appearance made him an easy target for troublemakers.

But Ceisler didn't buy it.

The judge surprised the packed courtroom and sentenced the pair to lengthy prison terms - six to 12 years for Engelhardt and eight to 16 years for Shero - for sexually assaulting the boy, who's now 24, at St. Jerome's parish school in Northeast Philadelphia in the late 1990s. The punishment was far tougher than what state sentencing guidelines would have allowed - just probation for Engelhardt, and a five-year term for Shero.

"We cannot allow adults in positions of trusted authority to abuse that trust and destroy lives without serious repercussions," Ceisler said, just before the two men's supporters began sobbing so loudly that deputies shooed them from the courtroom.

"Gutless!" one cried.

"He's a sacrificial lamb! Father Charles Engelhardt is innocent, and we will stand behind him forever and pray for justice!" said Grace McGuirl, a former principal at Mater Dolorosa School in Frankford, where Engelhardt worked in the early 2000s.

But Assistant District Attorney Evangelia Manos called Ceisler's sentence "a victory for all victims of sexual assault, especially those who do not have the courage to come forward."

"These men . . . cloaked themselves with the word of God and portrayed themselves to the community as good people, hiding the deceit and the evil within them," Manos added. "Through this trial . . . they've been exposed for who they are."

Lawyers for Engelhardt and Shero vowed to appeal. Both have attacked the credibility of the victim, a longtime drug addict with a criminal record, and suggested he manufactured his molestation story to try to get rich as a clergy-abuse victim