PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Newsworks
January 7, 2013
By Tom MacDonald
This week, another trial about allegations of sexual abuse in Philadelphia Catholic schools begins. It has national implications.
The Rev. Charles Engelhardt of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales and former Philadelphia Archdiocese teacher Bernard Shero are accused of abusing a student at St. Jerome’s parish in Northeast Philadelphia in the 1990s.
Cases such as this bring out evidence that has been kept hidden by the Catholic Church, says David Clohessey, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
“These kinds of trials are very, very rare,” Clohessey said. “So they provide a really unique opportunity to see firsthand what the evidence is about how much Catholic officials knew about abuse and yet tolerated, minimized, ignored it and, in some cases, enabled it.”
Clohessey says few allegations of abuse by church employees come to either civil or criminal trial.
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