Priest Abuse Trial Reveals Ugly Truths

by Victoria A. Brownworth

by Victoria A. Brownworth

It’s been four weeks since the opening arguments in the trial of Monsignor William Lynn, 61, the highest level member of the Catholic Church to be prosecuted in the sex abuse scandal that has rocked the country. Lynn is being charged with child endangerment among other crimes. Prosecutors allege that Lynn knowingly kept pedophile and sexual predator priests in parishes and schools where they had ready access to minors, thus allowing a pattern of sexual predation to continue unchecked.

From 1992 to 2004, Lynn was the secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese. He had full responsibility, under former Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, for all personnel issues for all the priests–more than 800–in the Archdiocese. That included complaints and investigations related to child sexual abuse.

Lynn has pleaded not guilty and his four attorneys have asserted that Lynn repeatedly reported sex abuse cases to Bevilacqua and that it was the late Cardinal who refused to address the problem.

The trial has witnessed a parade of former victims, police officers and various members of the Church hierarchy. It has also included the reading and admission into evidence of a myriad of previously sealed Church documents. A sordid and brutal tale of overnight “retreats” that were little more than sex parties for priests with parish minors as entertainment has emerged, often in tearful and heart-breaking testimony.

On April 23, one of the most appalling revelations yet was made by a Philadelphia priest. The priest testified that he had had a years-long sexual relationship with a teenager in his parish. The priest also testified that as a seminarian in 1974, he had been tied up and nearly gang-raped by fellow seminarians. Another priest–a friend to the victim–stopped the attack, but that priest later raped the victim himself on more than one occasion.

In 1992, the priest admitted to the sexual predation on the high school student. He was sent to an archdiocesan treatment center where it was determined that he was not a pedophile but was reacting to what the treatment center termed “traumatic sexual development.”

He was allowed to return to ministry and continued to be in close contact with children for more than a decade, unmonitored. His name has not been released since he is being considered a sexual assault victim himself.

Philadelphia has grown weary of the sex abuse scandal. The trial’s increasingly horrifying revelations haven’t merited headline attention and this latest shocker didn’t even make the local TV news–only KYW news radio’s Tony Hanson has been reporting on it daily. Have we become so inured to the breadth of this scandal in the Church that now we just ignore it?

The grand jury investigations uncovered a pattern of what former District Attorney Lynn Abraham called, “rape, sodomy and assault” on minor boys and girls within schools and parishes between 1948 and the first grand jury report in 2005. The 2005 report–that grand jury had convened over three years–cited 67 priests in a pattern of sexual assaults that included rape, sodomy, impregnation and even forced abortions. One girl was actually assaulted in her hospital bed where she lay in traction by the priest who was supposed to be ministering to the sick. It also seems that there were few altar boys who were not victimized as part of their ritualistic duties.

The 2011 report that led to the current trial was equally harrowing. The Archdiocese has put 23 priests on administrative leave since that report.

In the 57 year period through 2005, not one criminal complaint was filed by the Archdiocese to either police or prosecutors. Part of the testimony on April 23 stated that criminal charges would have been filed in the attempted gang rape, the rape of the priest and the sexual assault on the high school student had any of those crimes been reported. But they weren’t.

New testimony later in the week by a man alleging he was raped by two priests and his fifth-grade teacher at his parish in the Northeast when he was an altar boy in1999 will be key: Lynn’s attorneys intend to impugn the accuser’s credibility. However, that may lead to jurors being informed that another defendant in this case, Rev. Edward Avery, has already pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the then-altar boy. Avery pleaded guilty just prior to the case going to trial. He entered prison on April 2 and is now serving a two-and-a-half to five-year sentence for sexual assault and conspiracy.

But five other people have also told prosecutors that Avery sexually assaulted them as children. Which means Lynn would have yet more cases to defend against, since it was Lynn who should have had these priests removed from their parishes and also charged criminally. Since 2002, when Church rules changed, it has been required of Church officials to report sexual abuse complaints to the police.

With 1.5 million members, Philadelphia has one of the largest Archdioceses in the country. Yet just last week the Archdiocese announced that several churches in Manayunk, Germantown and Roxborough would be closing and/or merging due costs. Would those churches remain open if so many victims hadn’t been paid settlements for their trauma?

If the grand jury found dozens of priests culpable in the 2005 report, and more were uncovered in the 2011 report after the “problem” was allegedly clean up, how do we know still more perpetrators simply weren’t found out by those investigations? Avery was in ministry until he was arrested and charged last year. He wasn’t named in the 2005 report and five other alleged victims have come forward saying he assaulted them as well. Plus, the incident he admitted to took place in 1999 when Avery was 56. Are we to assume that he just woke up one morning in his middle 50s with an uncontrollable desire for altar boys? Or was this a pattern throughout his priesthood?

Rape and sexual assault are among the most recidivist of crimes. The testimony on April 23 points to an actual culture of rape, sexual assault and sexual brutality within the Archdiocese throughout the 1970s to the present. If Avery was part of that, and Lynn covered it up in the 12 years that he was in charge of complaints, how many other priests still in active ministry like Avery was are still preying on children and teens? How can we Catholics know if all the rapist priests have been removed from active ministry? How do we know if our own parish priest is actually one of those involved in preying on minors?

Another question raised by the most recent testimony is whether other seminarians have been sexually assaulted at St. Charles Boromeo Seminary. Is gang rape an initiation to the priesthood in Philadelphia?

There has been no comment from the Seminary as it is under a gag order since the trial began March 26, but this latest revelation certainly raises the question of what happens there and whether or not priests are or have been groomed to be rapists by older sexual predator priests. That certainly seems to have been the case with the priest who testified April 23 who went from victim to perpetrator.

When will the Archdiocese reveal just how much money it has paid out to victims over the years? With schools closing and merging due to alleged lack of funding, shouldn’t someone be accountable for the money spent on covering up all the rapes of children that have occurred in our churches and schools?

Will the documents that have become part of the trial evidence against Lynn, and against Rev. James Brennan, 48, who has also been charged with sexual assault against a child, reveal other priests in active ministry who are or were accused of sexually assaulting minors? The priest who testified on April 23 has not been defrocked as Avery was prior to entering prison. Why not? Because he was a victim as well as a perpetrator? What became of the priest who raped him? Where are those seminarians who allegedly tied him up to gang rape him?

The questions raised by this trial are manifold as they are sordid. The Church has had a lot to say of late about contraception and same sex marriage, but little about the scandal that continues to reveal layer upon layer of brutality perpetrated against the most vulnerable members of the Church. Even during this trial, victims are being impugned by the defense.

The Church hierarchy has victimized every member of the Church with its failure to protect or avenge these victims. It’s time for the Archdiocese to reveal the predators within its ranks and turn them over to prosecutors. Until that happens, the sex abuse scandal will continue to be a wound that can never truly heal. 

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