PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By John P. Martin
Inquirer Staff Writer
One by one, the assistant district attorneys walked to a courtroom lectern Monday to tell, at times explicitly, different versions of what sounded like the same story: priests molesting children, and Archdiocese of Philadelphia leaders failing to act on claims or signs of abuse.
One cited testimony from altar boys who said the former Rev. Edward Avery got them drunk in the 1970s, then proposed to “sober them up” by rubbing ice on their genitals.
Another detailed more than a dozen abuse claims against Nicholas Cudemo, who was shuffled among parishes and high schools over decades before he was defrocked.
A third said church leaders left the Rev. Michael Murtha in ministry for years after allegedly finding a cache of child pornography and a sexually graphic “fantasy letter” he had written to a boy in his Northeast Philadelphia parish.
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