PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog
Ralph Cipriano
“Father Ed” Avery liked to hang out at Smokey Joe’s and drink beer with college kids. He was into sleepovers with altar boys. He also preferred to spin records as a DJ rather than say Mass.
In Common Pleas Court over the past two days, the prosecution opened up “The Avery Files” — more than 100 confidential documents dealing with accusations of sex abuse against Father Edward V. Avery.
The priest, a defendant in the archdiocese sex abuse case, pleaded guilty last week to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old, and conspiracy, and faces a prison sentence of 2 1/2 to 5 years. But that guilty plea didn’t end Father Ed’s role in the ongoing archdiocese sex abuse case. The Avery files were introduced by Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington while he examined Detective Joseph Walsh, a Philadelphia police officer investigating archdiocese sex abuse since 2002.
Monsignor William J. Lynn began his investigation of Father Avery on Oct. 19, 1992, when he got a call from Robert Fisher, a married 29-year-old medical student. The accusations that Fisher made against Father Avery allegedly took place 10 to 15 years earlier, when Fisher was a teenager. At the time, Avery was associate pastor at St. Philip Neri, where Fisher went to church. Fisher said that Father Avery used to take him along when he worked as a DJ at Smokey Joe’s, a bar on the University of Pennsylvania campus in West Philadelphia.
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