Priest Released after Sex-abuse Appeal

The Times-Tribune
January 3, 2014

http://thetimes-tribune.com/priest-released-after-sex-abuse-appeal-1.1610970

Associated Press file Monsignor William Lynn in March 27, 2012, at Philadelphia Criminal Justice Center.

A Roman Catholic church official who won an appeal of his landmark conviction in the priest-abuse scandal left a Pennsylvania prison on Thursday after 18 months behind bars.

Monsignor William Lynn left the state prison in Waymart, prison spokeswoman Terri Fazio said, and was taken by the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office to a city jail, where he was to be fitted with an electronic monitoring device.

He will then be released, probably to the custody of a family member, one of his lawyers said. It was not clear late Thursday when that would happen.

The attorney, Thomas Bergstrom, declined to say where in Philadelphia his client will live while prosecutors appeal the Superior Court ruling.

Monsignor Lynn, 62, was the first U.S. church official ever charged for hiding complaints that priests were molesting children. He was the point person for those complaints in Philadelphia from 1992-2004.

Prosecutors charged him with felony child endangerment. But the appeals court said the law that existed at the time didn't cover people who don't directly supervise children.

Monsignor Lynn's lawyers, including Jeffrey Lindy and Alan Tauber, had made that argument even before his 2011 indictment, but Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina sent the case to trial.

The Philadelphia archdiocese has been in the crosshairs of city prosecutors since 2002, when the priest-abuse scandal broke in Boston. Monsignor Lynn, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and other church officials - accompanied by lawyers - were grilled for days by an earlier grand jury that issued a damning report in 2005 but concluded that no charges could be filed.

Prosecutors tried again under District Attorney Seth Williams, who charged three priests with new sexual assault allegations in 2011, and Monsignor Lynn with protecting the accused predators by hiding complaints in secret files. Cardinal Bevilacqua, by then frail and elderly, was a potential witness in Monsignor Lynn's case but died before trial. By that time, his mild-mannered successor, Cardinal Anthony Rigali, had been replaced in Philadelphia by dynamic Archbishop Charles Chaput.

Archbishop Chaput has twice visited Monsignor Lynn in prison and has said that no one person should become the scapegoat for the abuse crisis. Mr. Bergstrom, his attorney, said Monsignor Lynn has become just that.

Monsignor Lynn's conviction stems from the transfer of accused priest Edward Avery to a new parish, where he was later accused of raping a former altar boy in the church sacristy. Mr. Avery pleaded guilty and is serving 2? to 5 years in prison, although he denied the assault when called to testify at Monsignor Lynn's trial.

Monsignor Lynn remains a priest in good standing with the church, and could return to ministry. He last served as pastor of St. Joseph's in Downingtown.