PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2014
By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net
It’s the tighty-whitie defense.
When the prosecution presented its case against “Father Andy” McCormick, the alleged victim testified that the priest wore “blue plaid boxers” under his black priestly cossack. The alleged victim said he got a good look at those boxers 17 years ago when Father Andy allegedly attacked the victim, then a 10-year-old altar boy, in the priest’s bedroom in the rectory at St. John Cantius Church in Bridesburg.
Today, the defense called two witnesses who testified that Father Andy always wore white briefs.
First, Father Andy’s 87-year-old mother told the jury that she’s been buying the priest’s underwear for decades, and she always bought white briefs.
Then the longtime maintenance man at the church, Mark Pasternak, testified that for years he had seen the woman who did the priests’ laundry lay out the underwear on a table in the church basement. Pasternak told the jury that Father Andy, as well as every other priest at St. John Cantius, wore “tighty-whities.”
But on a day when Father Andy testified in his own defense, he was upstaged by what longtime maintenance man Pasternak had to say out in the hallway to reporters. The jury never heard a word of it.
“I sent a priest to jail,” Pasternak said out in the hallway. So he wouldn’t hesitate to send Father Andy to jail, he said, if he knew he was guilty.
“If a kid’s molested, I don’t care who you are, you’re going to jail,” Pasternak said.
There’s a reason why Pasternak looked familiar today to reporters covering Father Andy’s trial. The longtime maintenance man at St. John Cantius was Juror No. 5 in the 13-week trial of Msgr. William J. Lynn. Pasternak was one of the jurors who convicted Lynn on June 22, 2012 of one count of endangering the welfare of a child.
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