Tag: Avoiding Corporate Responsibility

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3 men settle abuse suits against church

Three men who filed the first sexual abuse lawsuits in the Navajo Nation court system against the Catholic Church have recently settled their cases.

The Gallup Independent reports that the men will receive money as part of the settlement from the priest who is accused of sexually abusing them, the Diocese of Gallup, the Franciscan Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Albuquerque and another church entity.

Patrick Noaker, an attorney who represented the men, said his clients have asked that the settlement amounts not be publicly disclosed.

The lawsuits allege that Charles Cichanowicz, a former Franciscan priest who once worked on the Navajo Nation, sexually abused them when they were teenagers in the late 1970s and 1980s. Cichanowicz was assigned to parishes in Shiprock, N.M., and St. Michaels, Ariz.

Attorneys for the Diocese of Gallup and Cichanowicz didn’t respond to requests for comment, nor did Albuquerque’s Franciscan Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

At least one of the lawsuits alleged that the diocese and the Franciscan orders transferred Cichanowicz when he was caught and continued to assign him to parishes, giving him unsupervised access to children.

It alleged they did not report him to authorities, tell parishes about him or take safeguards to prevent him from unlawful sexual conduct. Cichanowicz later left the priesthood.

Noaker said lawyers for those who were sued in the case offered no apologies to his clients, and Cichanowicz made no admission of guilt.

By filing their lawsuits in the Navajo Nation’s courts, Noaker said his clients feel like they have protected other children by raising public awareness of the sexual abuse of children on the Navajo Nation. Noaker said none of the men ever considered pursuing out-of-court confidential settlements with the Catholic Church.

He said the men started the legal process ashamed and embarrassed by what had happened to them and grew into men willing to take on the man they say abused them.

Complete Article HERE!

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Diocese seeks relief from clergy sex abuse verdict

The Catholic Diocese of Green Bay says its First Amendment rights protect it from liability in a civil lawsuit filed by two childhood victims of clergy sex abuse.

Brothers Todd and Troy Merryfield were awarded $700,000 in May by an Outagamie County Court that found the diocese committed civil fraud. The brothers claimed the diocese knew of the Rev. John Feeney’s illicit sexual history when it installed him as a priest at Freedom’s St. Nicholas Church and misrepresented him as safe while knowing he was a danger to children.

The Merryfields, then 12 and 14, were molested by Feeney in 1978. Feeney was sentenced to prison in 2004 for the assaults.

Sarah Fry Bruch, an attorney for the diocese, said the jury verdict should be overturned, arguing the court is constitutionally barred from reading any meaning into Feeney’s assignment to a pastoral role. The Merryfields didn’t show evidence the diocese represented Feeney as safe.

“Nor could they, as the assignment of a priest is a canonical act which the civil courts may not evaluate or explain,” she wrote. The First Amendment gives broad latitude to religious organizations in the conduct of their internal affairs.

Judge Nancy Krueger will hold a hearing Tuesday on motions filed by the diocese that seek a new trial, dismissal of the case, or overturning the jury’s findings.

John Peterson, an attorney for the Merryfields, disagreed in a written response, arguing the Merryfields’ claims against the church were secular. The diocese’s representation of Feeney as safe, by virtue of his unsupervised access to children, “has nothing to do with the Catholic Church’s religious beliefs.”

Granting the diocese immunity from Wisconsin law by finding in its favor “would raise grave Establishment Clause issues by actually advancing religion,” he wrote.

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from establishing a national religion or giving preference to one over another.

The First Amendment argument was one of several made by the diocese in a 40-page document asking for relief from the court.

One motion asks for a new trial, claiming bias on the part of a juror.

Another requests a dismissal, claiming the Merryfields unreasonably delayed filing the lawsuit and hamstrung the diocese’s ability to mount a defense. Several key witnesses died before the case reached trial.

The diocese also wants Krueger to rule the verdict excessive and change jury findings on the verdict form it returned.

Jurors awarded $475,000 to Troy Merryfield and $225,000 to Todd Merryfield. The brothers decided to not seek punitive damages after the diocese was found liable, saying the case was about revealing the truth, not money.

“A jury may have sympathy for the plaintiffs, but that alone cannot support a damage award,” Bruch wrote in arguing that evidence wasn’t sufficient.

Claims of juror bias arose after a member of the panel contacted the court about comments made by a fellow juror at the end of the case.

The juror mentioned to peers that a family member had attended St. Therese School in Appleton during the period Feeney was assigned to the church, and wondered aloud about the family member’s experiences with Feeney.

In addition, the juror was a friend of a cousin of the Merryfields’ mother, the diocese argues.

“One can only conclude that the juror purposefully kept back what she knew to get on the jury,” Bruch wrote.

Peterson said the juror’s recollections didn’t materialize until after the trial was under way, and she indicated so during an interview after concerns came forth.

The juror “did not exhibit any bias and stated that she could be fair and impartial,” he wrote.

Complete Article HERE!

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Man who attacked priest in revenge is not guilty of felonies

William Lynch, who beat the Catholic priest he said molested him as a child, is acquitted on elder abuse and felony assault charges. He may be retried on a misdemeanor assault charge.

SAN JOSE — A jury has found a San Francisco man not guilty of felony assault and felony elder abuse, despite his admission that he attacked the priest accused of molesting him nearly four decades ago.

Father Jerold Lindner. Lindner now lives in Los Gatos, California at Sacred Heart a retreat for Catholic clergy. San Francisco resident William Lynch said he has suffered nearly three decades of irreparable emotional and psychological harm, and attempted suicide two times, because of what happened to him at the hands of Jesuit priest Jerold Lindner during a church-led, family camping trip in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1975. Lindner was removed from active ministry in Los Angeles in 1997 in response to a civil suit filed by Lynch that year. In September of this year, the priest was returned to Sacred Heart. A retirement and medical center for about 65 Jesuit Roman Catholic priests and brothers, it has become a place where priests suspected of abusing children can be safely housed. Photo Received December 13, 2002.

The 10-man, two-woman panel also said Thursday that William Lynch was not guilty of misdemeanor elder abuse in the 2010 attack on Father Jerold Lindner. The 67-year-old Catholic priest has been linked to more than a dozen alleged victims — including his own nieces, nephew and sister — but never has been brought to trial because the statute of limitations in every case had run out.

The jury was split on a final charge against Lynch: misdemeanor assault. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge David Cena declared a mistrial on that count. Dist. Atty. Jeffrey Rosen said his office would decide in the coming days whether to retry Lynch.

After the verdict was read, Lynch said he had felt certain that he would be going to jail — and was pleasantly surprised that he would not. But he also spoke haltingly, and with deep emotion, about justice and responsibility.

“I was wrong for what I did,” said Lynch, 45. “If I’m going to be taking responsibility, I have to take it fully. And in [beating Lindner] … I was perpetuating the cycle of violence.”

Surrounded by family, supporters and his attorneys in front of the courthouse, Lynch said: “I wanted to … be accountable, unlike the church and Father Jerry up to this point.”

Rosen said that his office too had had a responsibility: to charge Lynch for lying his way into the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center, where the retired Lindner lived, and attacking him.

Using “a fake name, gloves. Beating and bloodying someone. That’s not justice under the law,” Rosen said after the verdict, giving a shorthand account of Lynch’s actions. “That’s revenge.”

Rosen said that although his office understood what motivated Lynch’s behavior, “we do not condone it.… A just punishment is delivered through our justice system, not through the acts of one traumatized and troubled man.”

The two-week-long trial was filled with dramatic turns and punctuated with tearful, graphic testimony — not about the attack in question, but about what happened in 1974. That is when Lindner allegedly lured Lynch and his younger brother, then 7 and 4, into his tent during a Catholic family camping trip. The boys said that the priest raped them and forced them to perform oral copulation on each other while he watched.

As the trial opened, Deputy Dist. Atty. Vicki Gemetti told the jury that Lindner, who was a spiritual advisor for the outing in the Santa Cruz Mountains, had indeed molested the Lynch brothers.

She played a gut-wrenching video of a San Jose Mercury News interview in which Lynch recently talked in graphic detail about that camping trip years ago. Gemetti told the jury that Lindner would “probably lie” when he took the stand.

When Gemetti asked whether he had molested Lynch and his brother, Lindner said: “No.”

Defense attorneys called for a mistrial, insisting Gemetti had committed prosecutorial misconduct by inducing perjury. Cena disagreed, and the trial continued.

But when Lindner returned to the stand, he refused to testify further on the grounds that he might incriminate himself. The judge then struck Lindner’s testimony entirely and told the jury to ignore the priest’s description of Lynch’s “vicious” attack.

And that, Juror No. 12 said, was key for him in deciding the case.

“The victim in this case disappeared,” said the retired accountant, who declined to give his name. “His testimony disappeared. To me, if you have no victim, do you have a crime?”

The juror, who walked with a cane and sported a silver brush cut, described the nine hours of jury deliberations over three days as cordial and professional.

“There were 12 people who simply agreed to disagree,” the juror said. “There was some disagreement with the law. There was disagreement with some of the testimony. There was disagreement with each other.”

The juror said that everyone on the panel believed that Lindner had committed “absolutely heinous” crimes against Lynch and his brother. But, he said, he was one of the eight who voted “guilty” on the lesser charge of simple misdemeanor assault because Lynch “got up and said he did it.”

To defense attorneys Pat Harris and Paul Mones, Lynch’s testimony was an act of courage fueled by his desire to protect other children from Lindner — and to fight the Roman Catholic Church and other institutions that cover up child sexual abuse and protect perpetrators.

“Will had the strength to speak for many people who can’t speak,” said Mones, who called the jury’s verdict “an example of what’s been happening around the country today.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Jury awards Catholic school sex-abuse victim $8M

SEATTLE — A King County jury has awarded $8 million to a victim of sexual abuse at a Seattle Catholic school. The sum is believed to be the largest ever against the Catholic Church in Washington state.

The jury found the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Catholic order of priests, guilty of ignoring the plaintiff’s complaints of sexual abuse at St. Benedict School in Wallingford. The plaintiff testified in court that he was abused on a weekly basis between 1961 and 1964 by a former teacher and principal, Daniel Adamson.

“This wasn’t minor abuse. This was three years of the worst crimes you can imagine on a child,” said the plaintiff, Stephen O’Connor. “What sexual abuse and sodomy and rape of a 12-year-old child is minimal?”

O’Connor, who grew up in Seattle but now splits his time between Western Washington and Spokane, said he hid the memories of sexual abuse for nearly 50 years but that a 2008 reunion at St. Benedict – to mark the school’s 100th anniversary – triggered an onslaught of feelings.

“I went to the boys’ bathroom, to the stall where it began. I went to the small projection room closet, where some of the worst crimes were,” O’Connor said. “I had to sit down in my house and tell my wife of 43 years who I’ve known since I was 7-years old (about what happened). I had to tell my four children.”

O’Connor says he was especially upset that he noticed Adamson’s photos had disappeared from the school walls – as if someone knew what had happened but tried to hide it.

“It was a trigger point. He went there, expecting to see this longtime teacher and principal – see his picture, see evidence, see evidence of him, and he saw that there was nothing, no evidence of him there,” said O’Connor’s attorney, Darrell Cochran. “What it triggered for him was that somebody knew he was a sexual abuser and they had removed everything about that guy.”

Adamson died in the 1970s. O’Connor testified in court, along with two other former students, that Adamson had an elaborate train set in his basement that he used to lure kids into his home and then abuse them.

O’Connor later dropped out of school to escape the abuse, he said. He joined the Marines and did two tours of duty in Vietnam, before becoming a police officer.

“As a United States Marine in combat, I wasn’t the only one. As a police officer on the worst 911 calls, I knew that Skagit County was coming or state patrol was coming,” he said, “but as a 12 year old 7th grader at St. Benedict’s I had no one. And none of those victims did. I was 12-years old, and everybody thought it was okay.”

The jury’s award of $8 million will be reduced to $6.4 million because the jury found the Seattle Archdiocese – which owned the school at the time – and the Dominican Sisters, another religious order who staffed the school, partially responsible.

The Seattle Archdiocese settled their part of the lawsuit last year for $500,000.

“We settled with them, and that’s in the past,” said Greg Magnoni, a spokesman for the archdiocese. “In every case of sexual abuse that’s occurred in a Catholic institution we deeply regret any harm or pain to the victims or the family.”

Calls to the Seattle attorney representing the Oblates and to the Oblate national office were not returned.

Complete Article HERE!

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Police launch child porn investigation at Connecticut church

Connecticut state police officers are investigating the discovery of possible child porn at a Roman Catholic church in Waterford.

WFSB-TV reports that police declined to provide details, saying only that a “criminal investigation” is in progress after computers were reportedly seized from the Rectory of St. Paul in Chains Church.

Michael Strammiello, a spokesman for the Diocese of Norwich, did not immediately respond to a call and an email seeking comment Saturday.

WFSB-TV says Norwich Bishop Michael Cote will release a letter to parishioners during masses this weekend announcing that he has received and accepted the resignation of their pastor, Fr. Dennis Carey.

The letter says the resignation is effective immediately and came after the pastor and bishop became aware of a state police investigation into possible criminal behavior by Carey.

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Woman Says ‘Exorcist’ Priest Abused Her

A Roman Catholic priest “kissed (a woman) on all parts of her body” during a so-called “exorcism” session, and “frequently explained full, passionate kisses as ‘blowing the Holy Spirit into’ her,” the woman claims in court.

Jane Doe sued the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, its Bishop Paul Loverde – who is not the priest accused of the abuse – and Human Life International and the HLI Endowment Inc., of Charlottesville, in Arlington County Court.

Doe claims she was sexually abused repeatedly by her “exorcist,” Thomas J. Euteneur, who was president of Human Life International and the HLI Endowment; Euteneur, however, is not named as an individual defendant.

Doe claims that Euteneur, a Roman Catholic priest, offers “‘spiritual deliverance’ and the performance of the rite of exorcism,” and did it “with the knowledge and consent of the Diocese and the Most Rev. Paul S. Loverde. … On at least one previous occasion, the Diocese and Bishop Loverde gave permission to Euteneur to conduct an exorcism within the Diocese.”

Doe claims that the defendants know that exorcism could be “potentially dangerous to the participants.” She says: “The defendants knew that a basic principle in the administration of an exorcism is that the priest should never act alone, and that he should always be accompanied by a support team who have been duly prepared to assist him.”

Doe says that her relationship with Euteneur began on Feb. 28, 2008, when she signed “a document entitled ‘Agreement for spiritual help.’ Among many other things, the document defines ‘deliverance’ as ‘the application of the spiritual resources of the Church to persons with demonic infestation in order to liberate them from the influence of unclean spirits.’”

Euteneur became her “deliverance minister,” and “The aforementioned documents included a requirement of ‘complete cooperation’ and travel to Euteneur’s offices at HLI,” according to the complaint.

Doe says that Euteneur told her “that her case was ‘severe.’”

For two months he touched her “in appropriate ways” in his offices, then in April 2008 told her “that he had received permission from the Diocese to perform the rite of exorcism,” Doe says.

On April 11, 2008, she says, “Euteneur began to hug the plaintiff while saying, ‘I wish I could go a lot further.’ He carried the plaintiff into a guest residence bedroom at HLI and HLIE, laid her on the bed, embraced her, touched her under her bra, and attempted to touch her under her underclothes, which the plaintiff stopped. Euteneur spent the entire night in bed with the plaintiff.

“During the following weeks, during every meeting, Euteneur became progressively persistent in touching the plaintiff inappropriately. He kissed the corners of her moth; stroked her legs, breasts and thighs; caressed her face; laid his body on top of hers; and frequently explained full, passionate kisses as ‘blowing the Holy Spirit into’ her.”

From April to June that year, on six occasions, Doe says, Euteneur “directed the plaintiff to undress; touched and kissed the plaintiff on all parts of her body; and digitally penetrated the plaintiff’s vagina. In addition, Euteneur directed the plaintiff to touch his penis.”

Doe claims that Euteneur “knew that his sexual violations on the plaintiff were not committed with her consent” and “would cause severe emotional distress to the plaintiff.”

Doe claims that HLI hired her as an independent contractor in September 2008, hired her as full-time employee in March 2010, and that during all this time, until June 2010, Euteneur “sexually abused her during working hours and in various rooms at HLI and HLIE headquarters.”

Doe claims that when she told Euteneur she had kept a journal “that she had kept a private journal which covered her time spent with Euteneur,” he persuaded her to “entrust the journal to him for safekeeping” while she took a vacation in Hawaii with her family.

She claims Euteneur “flew to Hawaii and secretly met with the plaintiff every morning while she was there.”

She claims that before she returned, Euteneur went to her home in Virginia “for the purpose of finding and collecting any and all other journals that the plaintiff might have kept. His attempt was unsuccessful.”

And, she claims, when she returned and asked for her journal back, “Euteneur reported that he had burned the journal ‘because it would scandalize the public and harm HLI.’”

After a final, abusive “deliverance,” Doe says, she concluded that her treatment was “illegal, inappropriate, outrageous, harmful, and completely contrary to the dictates of her understanding of Roman Catholic beliefs and practices.”

She claims she gave another priest in the Diocese a “detailed description of her relationship with Euteneur,” but Euteneur remained at HLI and HLIE for 2 more months, during which he sexually violated her two more times.

Finally, in August 2010, Euteneur resigned as president of HIL and HLIE and “was recalled to the Diocese of Palm Beach, Florida,” according to the complaint.

It continues: “On January 31, 2011, Euteneur published a statement in which he wrote: ‘I must acknowledge, however, that one particularly complex situation clouded my judgment and led me to imprudent decisions with harmful consequences, the worst of which was violating the boundaries of chastity with an adult female who was under my spiritual care.’”

She seeks punitive damages for assault, battery, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, negligent entrustment, medical bills, and loss of enjoyment of life.

Complete Article HERE!

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“Bad Spirit” invited to the Vatican

by digby

So the Catholic hierarchy decided it needs some professional PR help, what with all the bad press it’s had what with the pedophilia, nun-hating and other throwback policies and the like. Adele Stan reports that they’ve decided to hire a professional:

This weekend the Vatican announced its hire of Fox News correspondent Greg Burke for the newly created role of communications strategist…

Burke’s authoritarian bona fides hardly end with Fox News. He’s also a member of Opus Dei, the secretive, misogynist, elitist Catholic cult embraced by the late Pope John Paul II. And he’s not just a member, he’s a special member — a “numerary,” a position described by the Religion News Service as “a celibate layman who lives at an Opus Dei center…” The Opus Dei domicile at which Burke resides is in Rome.

Both men and women can bear the title of numeracy, but men enjoy a privileged position in their sex-segregated housing, where they are served by the women. A 1995 article in the Jesuit magazine, America, described the life of the female Opus Dei numerary this way:

According to two former numeraries, women numeraries are required to clean the men’s centers and cook for them. When the women arrive to clean, they explained, the men vacate so as not to come in contact with the women. I asked Bill Schmitt if women had a problem with this. “No. Not at all.” It is a paid work of the “family” of Opus Dei and is seen as an apostolate. The women more often than not hire others to do the cooking and cleaning. “They like doing it. It’s not forced on them. It’s one thing that’s open to them if they want to do it. They don’t have to do it.”

“That’s totally wrong,” said [former numerary] Ann Schweninger when she heard that last statement. “I had no choice. When in Opus Dei you’re asked, you’re being told.” According to Ms. Schweninger, it is “bad spirit” to refuse. Women are told that it is important to have a love for things of the home and domestic duties. “And since that’s part of the spirit of Opus Dei, to refuse to do that when you’re asked is bad spirit. So nobody refuses.”

It’s hard to imagine Greg Burke finding a way to sell that mentality to the media as a good thing — never mind the fact that Opus Dei members are devoted to “mortification of the flesh” by wearing cilices, metal chains with spikey prongs that the wearer fastens tightly to the thigh, prongs to flesh.

This is the really funny part. You’ll recall that I wrote last week about the high level cardinal who said that everyone was believing in Dan Brown conspiracy theories (which were the work of the Devil)?

With an apparent lack of self-awareness, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone “accused the media of trying ‘to imitate Dan Brown’ in their coverage of the VatiLeaks scandal,” according to Reuters. In Brown’s conspiracy thriller, The DaVinci Code, Opus Dei is a major player in a Vatican conspiracy. In hiring Burke, it’s almost as if the Vatican was looking to feed the fantastic conspiracies of Brown and his fellow travelers. You could call that an epic PR fail.

I always thought that Dan Brown stuff was nuts. But maybe not …

Complete Article HERE!

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Gerald T. Slevin: The Jury Has Spoken! Will the Pope Now Speak?

In Philadelphia today, the jury in the Philadelphia abuse trial found Msgr. William Lynn guilty of child endangerment. Brian Roewe reports on this story at National Catholic Reporter. Jerry Slevin, a Harvard-trained lawyer who has closely followed this trial, has sent the following powerful statement about the verdict:

A Philly jury, that included several Catholics, has found a former top aide to two prominent Philly Catholic Cardinals guilty of endangering children who were sexually assaulted by predatory priests as described here and here.
The Cardinals’ aide, Monsignor Lynn, offered as his main defense that he was only following the Cardinals’ orders pursuant to the Philadelphia Catholic Archdiocese’s massive child abuse cover-up program that continued for decades until as late as last year at least.

The Cardinals had very close ties to the Vatican. One of them, Cardinal Rigali, worked closely with the current pope in Rome for over a decade and was St. Louis mentor for New York’s Cardinal Dolan, head of the American bishops.
The trial revealed in detail a cover-up program that appears to be standard operating procedure in the Catholic Church worldwide.

Will the pope now address this disgrace openly, honestly and effectively? He clearly has failed to do so in the past.

The many ties of the Philly Cardinals to the Vatican are described here.
The challenges the Philly disclosures recently presented for the U.S. bishops are described here.

Several weeks ago U.S. bishops met and had the opportunity to revise their national child protection program to meet these challenges. The bishops, however, failed once again to do so, as U.S. bishops still are not fully accountable for protecting children in their care. The bishops merely continued the policies that a Philly jury has now found to have failed.
The Philly verdict also indicates that the Vatican’s current strategy is doomed to fail as noted here.

It is now quite clear that the Catholic hierarchy is either incapable or unwilling to protect American children, over 100,000 of whom have been sexually abused by predatory priests according to the Vatican’s own experts’ estimates at a recent Vatican conference. That number considerably exceeds the combined U.S. casualties and fatalities from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It also represents a number of abused that is equivalent to well over several thousand times all of Jerry Sandusky’s estimated victims.

Will Obama, Romney, Biden, Boehner, Reid, McConnell and Pelosi finally do their duty to protect American children and adopt effective national laws and enforcement policies to protect children from this national scourge?
Ireland is doing it. Why not the U.S. as well?

Complete Article HERE!

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Monsignor William Lynn convicted of endangerment

A Roman Catholic church official was convicted Friday of child endangerment but acquitted of conspiracy in a groundbreaking clergy-abuse trial, becoming the first U.S. church official convicted of a crime for mishandling abuse claims.

Monsignor William Lynn helped the archdiocese keep predators in ministry, and the public in the dark, by telling parishes their priests were being removed for health reasons and then sending the men to unsuspecting churches, prosecutors said.

Lynn, 61, had faced about 10 to 20 years in prison if convicted of all three counts he faced – conspiracy and two counts of child endangerment. He was convicted only on one of the endangerment counts, leaving him with the possibility of 3 1/2 to seven years in prison.

The jury could not agree on a verdict for Lynn’s co-defendant, the Rev. James Brennan, who was accused of sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy.

Lynn has been on leave from the church since his arrest last year. He served as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, mostly under Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua.

No matter the verdict, the trial exposed how deeply involved the late cardinal was in dealing with accused priests. Rarely an hour of testimony went by without Bevilacqua’s name being invoked.

Bevilacqua had the final say on what to do with priests accused of abuse, transferred many of them to new parishes and dressed down anyone who complained, according to testimony. He also ordered the shredding of a 1994 list that warned him that the archdiocese had three diagnosed pedophiles, a dozen confirmed predators and at least 20 more possible abusers in its midst. Prosecutors learned this year that a copy had been stashed in a safe.

Lynn didn’t react when the verdict was read and remained sitting in his chair, his head lowered, even when the judge took a brief recess to thank the jury. He also didn’t acknowledge the dozen or so family members, some of whom were weeping, sitting behind him in the gallery.

The judge ordered that Lynn’s bail be revoked and he was led to jail. The judge said she would at some point entertain a motion for house arrest.

With the verdict, jurors concluded that prosecutors failed to show that Lynn was part of a conspiracy to move predator priests around.

The jury, however, did find that Lynn endangered the victim of defrocked priest Edward Avery, who pleaded guilty before trial to a 1999 sexual assault.

Lynn had deemed Avery “guilty” of an earlier complaint by 1994, and helped steer him into an inpatient treatment program run by the archdiocese. But Lynn knew that Avery later was sent to live in a northeast Philadelphia parish, where the altar boy was assaulted.

Karen Polesir, a spokeswoman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests who was outside the courthouse, said it was a historic trial because it revealed “the abuse and the cover-ups that have been going on in the Philadelphia archdiocese for a long time.”

She said her immediate reaction to the verdict was tears.

“I’m brokenhearted for all the victims that were brave enough to come forward, and the whistleblowers that were brave enough to come forward,” Polesir said. “I’m glad for the one count of guilty, but that is not enough to vindicate the victims and survivors. I feel that there was overwhelming evidence against Monsignor Lynn and that the decision is just heartbreaking.”

Defense lawyers say Lynn alone tried to document the complaints, get priests into treatment and alert the cardinal to the growing crisis. Church documents show therapists had called one accused priest a ticking “time bomb” and “powder keg.”

During the 10-week trial, more than a dozen adults testified about wrenching abuse they said they suffered at the hands of revered priests.

A former seminarian said he was raped by a priest throughout high school at the priest’s mountain house.

A nun testified that she and two female relatives were sexually abused by a priest described by a church official as “one of the sickest people I ever knew.”

A troubled young man described being sexually assaulted in the church sacristy in 1999 by Avery after the 10-year-old altar boy served Mass. Avery is serving a 2 1/2- to five-year prison term.

“I can’t explain the pain, because I’m still trying to figure it out today, but I have an emptiness where my soul should be,” another accuser testified. His mother had sent him to a priest for counseling as an eighth-grader because he’d been raped by a family friend. The priest then followed suit, he said.

Seven men and five women sat on the jury, along with eight alternates. Many have ties to Catholic schools or parishes, but said they could judge the case fairly. There are about 1.5 million Catholics in the five-county archdiocese, and Philadelphia neighborhoods were long identified by their local parishes.

Defense lawyers called the decision to send Lynn to prison overly harsh, given his ties to the community and lack of any prior criminal record. They said they would move for house arrest on Monday. Lynn will spend at least the weekend in a Philadelphia jail.

“He’s upset. He’s crushed. He’s in custody and he didn’t want anything else but to help kids,” defense lawyer Jeffrey M. Lindy said.

Brennan, Lynn’s co-defendant, was accused of sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy in 1996. With the jury unable to agree, the judge declared a mistrial on the attempted rape and child endangerment charges against him.

Lynn’s lawyer, Thomas Bergstrom, pledged in opening statements in late March that the monsignor would not run from the sins of the church. However, he said in closing arguments that Lynn should not be held responsible for them.

He suggested his client was a middle manager-turned-scapegoat for the clergy-abuse scandal. Lynn, he said, documented the abuse complaints and did his best to get reluctant superiors to address it.

“And now, now of all things, the commonwealth wants you to convict him for documenting the abuse that occurred in the archdiocese, …. the evil that other men did. They want to hold him responsible for their sins.”

Philadelphia prosecutors have been investigating the archdiocese for 10 years, since the national crisis erupted in the Boston archdiocese. Lynn testified several times before a grand jury that sat from about 2002 to 2005.

That panel produced a blistering report that identified 63 suspected child molesters in the archdiocese, but said no one could be charged because of legal time limits.

Afterward, then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham helped fight for state reforms that gave reluctant victims more time to come forward in Pennsylvania – and enabled her successor, Seth Williams, to charge Monsignor Lynn and four others last year based on more recent complaints.

In a hotly contested ruling in Lynn’s case, Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina let prosecutors tell jurors about 20 of the accused priests named in the first grand jury report, even though they were never charged, because Lynn worked on their files to some extent.

Prosecutors said they showed a pattern at the archdiocese of lying about why priests were removed, sending them to “company doctors” at church-run therapy centers and failing to warn new parishes where they were later transferred.

“They put so many innocent children in danger,” Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington said in his closing remarks, noting that it can take years or decades for victims to come forward. “That’s what’s so scary about this. We have no idea how many victims are out there.”

By Bergstrom’s count, the commonwealth spent about 36 of 40 trial days on the tangential cases.

An appeal based on the inclusion of that evidence is considered likely.

Complete Article HERE!

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Exit, Don’t Enable the Roman Catholic Church

By Wayne Besen

If there is one thing that irks me, it is having the Roman Catholic Church preach to me about sexual morality. It is a religious sect led by a virulently homophobic Pope that goes out of its way to trash my family. Yet, my family hasn’t spent a cent defending itself against nonexistent charges of child rape, while the Vatican has spent $2.5 billion on legal fees, prevention programs, and settlements relating to the sexual abuse of minors.

Exactly why should I listen to what these “holy” men have to say? I’ve been out of the closet for twenty-four years, during which time I worked in the center of the LGBT movement, but can’t think of a single friend or colleague arrested for child molestation. None of the people I associate with have shielded, shuffled, or offered severance packages to pedophiles to protect the institutions that they work for. But such obscene behavior is precisely what the Vatican did, all the while turning my loved ones into scapegoats to obscure their criminality.

The latest preoccupation of the Catholic Church, as well as their brethren in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Community, is fiercely lobbying state legislatures to not change the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse cases.

“Even when you have the institution admitting they knew about the abuse, the perpetrator admitting that he did it, and corroborating evidence, if the statute of limitations has expired, there won’t be any justice,” Marci Hamilton, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cordozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, explained to the New York Times.

It seems the hierarchy is only interested in saving its own skin, instead of paying a price for those whose skin it violated. For a church built on a human sacrifice, there is scant evidence of noble virtues as the church lies and litigates against its victims.

Which brings us to a burning question: Why do liberal Catholics continue to support an intolerant, homophobic, misogynistic institution capable of covering up heinous crimes against children?

I’m not the only one asking this pertinent question. On June 1, the Freedom From Religion Foundation placed a full-page ad in USA Today headlined, “It’s Time to Quit The Catholic Church.”

According to the ad: “If you think you can change the church from within – get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research – you’re deluding yourself. By remaining a ‘good Catholic,’ you are doing ‘bad’ to women’s rights. You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.”

New York Times columnist Bill Keller also urged moderate Catholics to find a new church: “Much as I wish I could encourage the discontented, the Catholics of open minds and open hearts, to stay put and fight the good fight, this is a lost cause…Summon your fortitude, and just go. If you are not getting the spiritual sustenance you need, if you are uneasy being part of an institution out of step with your conscience — then go.”

It does seem as if diehard liberal and moderate Catholics are not fighting so much as being beaten to a pulp by ideologues. If this were a boxing match, it would have been stopped many rounds ago. Indeed, attacks from the right have become so extreme that the Church is even going after American nuns. If nuns aren’t Catholic enough for these fanatics, liberal Catholics sure aren’t going to be embraced any time soon.

This whole debate reminds me of when gay people from conservative backgrounds complain to me that they can’t come out because of the environment in which they were raised. One says, “I grew up in a traditional Chinese household, so I can’t tell my parents.” While another person says, “I grew up in a Pentecostal family, so I can’t tell anyone.” And yet another proclaims, “You wouldn’t understand, it’s not that easy coming out because my parents are from a rural area.”

Everybody has an excuse or explanation, and, no, it’s never easy to come out – but at the same time, it really is a simple process. Saying “I’m gay” works like a charm every time and frees a person to be their authentic self.

Similarly, it may be incredibly difficult to leave the Catholic Church. But, it is also as easy as going to a computer search engine and typing “church” or speaking into your iPhone, “Siri, find me a church.” Within moments dozens of alternatives will pop up – many of which are more concerned with spirituality than the statute of limitations.

Are you tired of being treated like an abused dog by the Catholic Church? Then drop the dogma and quit. After all, they quit you, your family, and your moderate belief system a long time ago. Exit, don’t enable.

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