Category: Clergy Sex Abuse

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Cardinal’s presence felt at Pa. church-abuse trial

Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua died just weeks before his longtime aide went on trial in the alleged cover-up of sexual assaults by priests within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Yet Bevilacqua is very much the ghost inside courtroom 304 at the Philadelphia Criminal Justice Center. Rarely an hour goes by that his name is not invoked.

Witnesses portray him as a regal, sometimes feared authoritarian figure: “the man at the top,” in the words of city detective Joseph Walsh.

After eight weeks of evidence, prosecutors trying to convict Monsignor William Lynn of child endangerment rested Thursday without showing the videotaped deposition Bevilacqua gave two months before his Jan. 31 death. He was 88, and battling cancer and dementia. And he claimed to remember few details of the scores of abuse complaints that came in under his watch, according to a defense motion.

Yet since his death, prosecutors have learned the cardinal ordered two confidantes to destroy a 1994 list Lynn had prepared of 35 problem priests.

The list warned the cardinal they had three diagnosed pedophiles, a dozen confirmed predators and at least 20 more possible abusers in their midst.

Bevilacqua promptly had the list shredded, according to a memo signed by his loyal aides, current Bishop Joseph R. Cistone of Saginaw, Mich., and now-retired Bishop Edward Cullen of Allentown, Pa.

“It was all about the good of Mother Church,” Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington argued to the trial judge Thursday. “It’s not only criminal, it’s outrageously criminal.”

Lynn was the point person for abuse complaints in his role as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004. He had little training for the job.

“I thought I was dealing with them adequately,” Lynn told a grand jury in 2002, when prosecutors started investigating the archdiocese. “I didn’t get any direction.”

Ten years later, jurors have seen nearly 2,000 documents subpoenaed from secret church archives, an astonishing cache that was long protected by locks, keys and door alarms.

They have also heard from former altar boys, and men and women who worked in rectories growing up, who said they were raped or fondled for years.

Prosecutors call Lynn a key player in developing the archdiocese’s response to the complaints. Typically, that meant taking statements from the accused and accuser, typing up memos, and sometimes sending a priest for counseling before he was transferred to a new parish.

Lynn’s defense lawyers have at times called their client a mere “scrivener” who carried out Bevilacqua’s orders. And even prosecution witnesses agreed the cardinal ultimately decided priest assignments.

Jurors also heard what happened if a pastor refused to take one of the bad apples. Monsignor Michael Picard of Newtown testified that he was called down to meet with Bevilacqua about his “disobedience” in 1996. He spent 14 years “in the penalty box,” denied the title of monsignor.

The evidence paints Lynn, by comparison, as a company man, dutiful and compliant. He alone now faces more than 20 years in prison if convicted.

“I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know whether he broke the law. But he certainly did not do the honorable thing,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. “He should have looked Bevilacqua in the eye and said, `You can’t do this. This is wrong, and I’m not going to be part of it.'”

The cardinal, trained in both canon and civil law, made 10 combative appearances before the grand jury in 2003 and 2004, accompanied by high-priced counsel. Prosecutors blasted Bevilacqua in their 2005 grand jury report, but said they couldn’t charge him because the statute of limitations had run out on the accusations.

A second grand jury last year complained there were still dozens of accused Philadelphia priests in ministry. Armed with new complaints and revised laws, prosecutors charged three priests and a teacher with sexually assaulting two boys in the 1990s. They charged Lynn with two counts each of child endangerment and conspiracy.

“You don’t care about the boys. You care about the business of the church,” Blessington said Thursday about the lead defendant.

Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina dropped one of the conspiracy charges when prosecutors rested, finding insufficient evidence Lynn had conspired with the Rev. James Brennan to keep him in ministry. Brennan is also on trial, charged with molesting a teenager in 1996. Defrocked priest Edward Avery pleaded guilty to a 1999 sexual assault, and is serving a 2 1/2- to five-year term.

The defense starts its case Tuesday, with Lynn’s former assistants and several character witnesses expected to testify. It’s not clear whether Lynn will take the stand.

The jury is expected to get the case in about two weeks – presumably, without ever hearing the sealed testimony of “the man at the top.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Church lawyer: Philly cardinal, aides lied to me

A Roman Catholic cardinal and his top aides lied to their lawyer about shredding a key piece of evidence in the Philadelphia clergy-abuse scandal, the lawyer testified Monday.

Lawyer Tim Coyne was looking for an internal list of 35 suspected predator-priests for a 2004 grand jury investigation. He asked Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and four top aides where to find it.

Coyne said he doesn’t remember any response from Bevilacqua. And the aides — two of whom went on to lead other dioceses — denied they knew where it was, Coyne said.

No one told him that Bevilacqua had ordered the list shredded in 1994, shortly after Monsignor William Lynn, his secretary for clergy, compiled it.

“Everyone who I spoke to said they didn’t know where it was and they didn’t have a copy of it,” Coyne testified Monday.
“Everybody lied to you?” Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington asked.
“That’s fair,” Coyne said.

The list is something of a smoking gun in Lynn’s child-endangerment trial, although each side is trying to spin it to their advantage.

Prosecutors in 2004 were deep into a three-year probe of the archdiocese. Their blistering 2005 grand jury report blasted Bevilacqua, Lynn and others for their handling of abuse complaints lodged against 63 priests, but said no criminal charges could be filed.

It’s not clear if the list — or suggestions that evidence was being shredded — would have helped them make a case against anyone. But one accused priest on the 1994 list continued to lead a South Philadelphia parish until he was suspended this past March.

Lynn, 61, was charged last year over his handling of more recent abuse complaints.

Defense lawyers argue that he alone tried to do something about the festering abuse problem when he served as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004. They point to the list as proof.

Lynn told the grand jury that he had decided, after taking office, to go through secret church files to create a list of problem priests who were still on duty. His list described three priests as diagnosed pedophiles, and deemed others “guilty” because they had admitted the abuse. The list was discussed at a February 1994 meeting between Bevilacqua and his closest aides.

According to a memo, Bevilacqua ordered Monsignor James E. Molloy to shred the original list and three copies, including one made for Bishop Edward Cullen, a top aide who later led the Allentown diocese.

Hand-written notes state that Molloy did so in the presence of another aide, Bishop Joseph R. Cistone, who is now the bishop of Saginaw, Mich.
Yet a surviving copy surfaced at the archdiocese early this year — 10 days after Bevilacqua died.

The list was found in a gray file in Coyne’s office. But it had first been found in 2006 in a locked safe at the Secretary for Clergy’s office.

A staff person cleaning out the file room — in disarray after the grand jury investigation — came across the safe and had a locksmith open it, according to her testimony last week.

She said she found a gray file inside and left it with an assistant to Monsignor Timothy Senior, who had succeeded Lynn. Coyne testified that Senior later gave the file to him for safe keeping. He said he only glanced at it before putting it in his files, and didn’t realize it held the list he had sought years earlier.

On cross-examination from defense lawyer Thomas Bergstrom, Coyne acknowledged that Lynn had apparently looked for the list in 2004 after telling the grand jury about it.

“My impression is he looked everywhere for it,” Coyne said.

Bergstrom suggested the locked safe belonged to Molloy, Lynn’s supervisor.

The list only surfaced on Feb. 10, on the eve of Lynn’s trial. Bevilacqua had died Jan. 31 at age 88.

As church officials took the stand Monday, the gray file became a hot potato. Senior, now an auxiliary bishop in Philadelphia, denied ever touching it. Fr. James Oliver, Senior’s assistant and a canon lawyer, likewise said he didn’t recall handling it.

Prosecutors have called the archdiocese an “unindicted co-conspirator” in Lynn’s case. Bevilacqua, in 10 combative appearances before the grand jury in 2003 and 2004, denied any attempt to obstruct the investigation.

The jury is expected to get the case by Memorial Day, after three months of testimony. Lynn faces up to 28 years in prison if convicted.
A spokeswoman for Cistone referred a call for comment Monday to his lawyer, William Winning of Philadelphia, who did not immediately return a message. A message left through the Allentown diocese for Cullen, who retired in 2009, was not immediately returned. Molloy died in 2006.

The Philadelphia archdiocese is not commenting on trial developments because of a gag order.

Complete Article HERE!

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No Wonder The Boys In Purple Have A Problem With Their ‘Sisters’

COMMENTARY

A nun who was sexually abused as a minor by a predator priest called out Monsignor William J. Lynn Thursday from her perch on the witness stand.

It was a dramatic confrontation as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial wrapped up its seventh week of testimony. Lynn is on trial for allegedly conspiring to endanger the welfare of children by allowing abusive priests to continue in ministry

All along, the defense mantra has been that the monsignor was just a cog in the wheel down at archdiocese headquarters on 222 N. 17th St., and that the ultimate villain in the case was the guy who wielded the ultimate power in the archdiocese, the conveniently dead Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua.

But the nun on the witness stand refused to play along.

It started when Thomas Bergstrom, a defense lawyer for Msgr. Lynn, tried to get the nun on cross-examination to agree that Msgr. Lynn did not have the power to remove a pastor who had sexually abused her and at least 10 other young women.

“He [Lynn] had the power to suggest it,” she said, referring to the removal of the pastor. And then on redirect, when the prosecutor asked her about the power Lynn had as the archdiocese’s secretary for clergy, the nun said that Lynn had the simple power of just saying no.

Instead of going along with the power structure, the nun said, “You can also say, I cannot do this.”

It was a simple, but powerful declaration coming from a nun who herself was an administrator down at archdiocese HQ, and also as a young woman, a victim of sex abuse from a pervert priest.

The nun, who did not want to be identified, wasn’t finished.

“I would think that his [Lynn’s] recommendation would be heard,”she told Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington. And if it wasn’t, Lynn could have told the cardinal, “I cannot go on; if it isn’t done that way, I can quit.”

The nun’s firm but understated conviction about the need to simply do the right thing sent a ripple of excitement through courtroom spectators, which included victims of sex abuse, and activists hoping for the impossible, reform in the Roman Catholic Church. It also raised an age-old question, namely why do the women in the Catholic church usually have more balls than the men?

Before she called out the monsignor, the nun told her story about how she had been abused by the notorious Father Nicholas V. Cudemo, a serial rapist who used mind control and guilt to dominate his victims.

The nun, dubbed “Sister Irene” in the 2005 grand jury report, was Father Cudemo’s second cousin. The priest also abused the nun’s sister, and a younger cousin, in addition to at least eight other young women.

The witness was 15 years old when Father Cudemo took her to baseball and basketball games at Archbishop Kennedy High School, where the priest was a teacher. While driving her home one night, Cudemo pulled over, and started kissing her passionately. “He got on top of me,” the nun testified. “His hands were literally all over me.”

The witness told the jury that she had dated boys before, but had never experienced such “intense passion or strength.”

Then, when she was 16, it happened again. Father Cudemo drove her home, this time with a carload of other kids. While driving, he took her hand and “placed it on his penis strongly,” she said, and then he just held her hand there.

“I just went numb,” she said. Father Cudemo would call up the victim and tell her she was “his favorite cousin,” and he would explain his behavior by saying, “cousins have these kinds of relationships.”

In 1991, Sister Irene found out that Father Cudemo had sexually abused her younger cousin, identified in the grand jury report as Ruth. The abuse of Ruth began at 10, and included an abortion at 11. Sister Irene was shattered by the news.

“I really felt for the first time in my life I was confronting evil,” she told the jury. So the nun, her sister, and her cousin Ruth went to the archdiocese on Sept. 25, 1991, to report the abuse. They told Msgr. James E. Molloy, vicar for administration, and his assistant, Msgr. Lynn, that they wanted Father Cudemo removed from his post as pastor of St. Callistus Church.

Molloy told the victims, “It’s not that easy to remove a pastor at this time,” the nun told the jury. When the victims suggested the archdiocese notify parishioners at St. Callistus about what the priest had done to his victims, they were told it would be “defamation of character” and “calumny.”

Complete Article HERE!

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The passivity of the Catholic Church

COMMENTARY

BY THE CATHOLIC Church’s reckoning, it has undergone a sea change since the days when sexual predators in clerical collars sexually abused young boys with scant fear of dismissal, reprimand or even excessive concern by their supervisors. American dioceses have paid billions of dollars in compensation to victims, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued what amounts to a zero-tolerance policy and Pope Benedict XVI has apologized to victims of clergy sexual abuse here and in Ireland.

Yet despite the hierarchy’s insistence that it is investigating and rooting out sex criminals, the church often seems stuck in a defensive crouch. Too often it has failed to move against abusers and those who tolerate them until forced to do so by legal action or the threat of full-blown scandal.

That’s the lesson in the story of the Rev. Bradley M. Schaeffer, for many years one of the most prominent Jesuit leaders in America. As the Boston Globe reported last month, Mr. Schaeffer, as leader of the Jesuits in Chicago in the 1990s, was presented with credible complaints from family members that a priest under his supervision was sexually abusing young boys. The priest, Donald J. McGuire, had been the subject of similar reports going back to the 1960s.

Rather than alerting police or removing Mr. McGuire from any ministry that would have allowed him contact with boys, Mr. Schaeffer sent him for treatment for a sexual disorder — which didn’t work. According to court records, Mr. McGuire continued to prey on boys for years afterward. Convicted by a federal jury in 2008 for molesting a schoolboy, Mr. McGuire is now serving a 25-year prison sentence.

In response to the Globe’s reporting, Mr. Schaeffer said he regretted that in the early 1990s he had not stopped what he called “these horrific crimes.” Yet he went on to become president of the U.S. Jesuit Conference, the largest Catholic order in America, and a board member of major Jesuit institutions, including Georgetown University. He resigned from Georgetown’s board of directors, on which he served as vice chair, shortly after the Globe’s story appeared.

The Schaeffer saga fits an all too familiar pattern of passivity by the church. Worryingly, there are even signs that the church’s passivity has morphed into hostility toward its accusers. In March, the New York Times reported that lawyers for the church have launched a campaign against a group that has championed the victims of pedophile priests, asking courts to force the group to disclose more than 20 years of e-mails. The organization, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, says that the church’s action is a serious threat to its advocacy.

While Catholic leaders insist they have turned the tide against clerical sexual abuse, the church’s behavior suggests that its default is to protect the abusers and their supervisors who turned a blind eye. Until that changes, the church’s promises of zero tolerance will remain an illusion.

Complete Article HERE!

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Accused priest told therapist of attempted gang rape at Philadelphia seminary

A Catholic priest admitting a sexual relationship with a teen said he had been the victim of an attempted gang rape by fellow seminarians, according to testimony in a clergy-abuse trial.

Testimony on Monday also mentioned Pope Benedict XVI, who weighed in on the priest’s 2005 censure when he was a Vatican official known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Documents show the priest had admitted to the Philadelphia archdiocese in 1992 that he had sex with the high school student for several years. An archdiocesan treatment center concluded the priest was not a pedophile, but was affected by his “traumatic sexual development.” He remained in ministry for another decade.

It’s not clear if the trauma reference was to the alleged seminary assault. The priest told a therapist he had been tied down by several seminarians who tried to rape him and that a friend came to his rescue. But the same friend later twice abused him, the priest told the therapist, according to documents read in court.

The Associated Press is not naming the priest, who graduated from seminary in 1974, because he may be a sexual-assault victim.

The testimony came in the child-endangerment trial of Monsignor William Lynn, the longtime secretary for clergy in Philadelphia. Prosecutors say he helped keep dangerous priest-predators in jobs where they could continue to abuse children.

The priest discussed Monday stayed in active ministry until the national priest-abuse scandal broke in 2002. His ministry was supposed to be strictly supervised so he was not alone around adolescent boys, but he lived alone in a parish rectory in Lower Merion one year, and had little if any supervision after leaving the hospital in 1993, prosecutors allege. He remains a priest today, but lives a private life of “prayer and penance.”

On cross-examination, defense lawyer Jeffrey Lindy noted that Lynn got the priest to admit to the sexual relationship with the teen the same day the complaint came in to Lynn in 1992, and soon had him being evaluated. However, a detective on the stand noted that police, had they gotten such an admission, would have pursued criminal charges.

Neither the priest’s admission — nor the scores of other abuse complaints brought to the archdiocese from 1948 through the 2005 grand jury report — were ever referred to police or prosecutors.

The priest’s alleged victim had disclosed the abuse to another priest during marriage preparation. That priest and the fiancee — by then the accuser’s ex-girlfriend — went to the archdiocese in July 1992. Lynn’s office never tried to interview the accuser.

There was no follow-up testimony Monday on the seminary rape allegation. The Philadelphia archdiocese runs St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, but can’t comment because of a gag order.

Meanwhile, Lynn’s lawyers are preparing for a potential showdown this week with a key trial witness.

A man who said he was raped by two priests and his fifth-grade teacher at a northeast Philadelphia parish is scheduled to testify Wednesday.

The defense wants to challenge his credibility. But if they do, the judge is likely to let jurors hear that one of the priests has pleaded guilty.

Defrocked priest Edward Avery, 69, pleaded guilty days before trial to sexually assaulting the northeast Philadelphia altar boy in 1999. He is now in prison, serving 2 1/2 to five years for sexual assault and conspiracy.

Judge M. Teresa Sarmina is also pondering whether jurors can hear that five other people have come forward since 2010 to say Avery molested them as children. Defense lawyers say those allegations are beyond Lynn’s control, since he left office in 2004.

But Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington said Lynn left “a powder keg” in place after the first complaint was filed in 1992.

“Lynn put a powder keg out there whose name was Avery. If that powder keg explodes, a kid gets raped,” Blessington said.

Complete Article HERE!