PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WQOW
By MARYCLAIRE DALE
Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – A Roman Catholic church official charged with handling child sexual-abuse complaints for more than a decade had little to no training on how to conduct the sensitive investigations, a jury heard Monday.
Monsignor William Lynn, 61, faces years in prison for allegedly helping the church keep accused predators in jobs around children. Excerpts of testimony from his 2004 testimony before a grand jury were read in court Monday during his child-endangerment trial.
In his testimony, Lynn said he attended at most a workshop or two on the sexual abuse of minors, but otherwise had no training on how to interview the priests, their accusers or other potential witnesses.
Lynn said a case he investigated in 1994 led him to scrutinize secret archives kept by the Philadelphia Archdiocese. Lynn, on the job two years, had wanted “to make sure we don’t have anybody in ministry that shouldn’t be.”
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