Philadelphia (Catholic) Church Official Sentenced to at Least 3 Years in Prison

By JON HURDLE and ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: July 24, 2012

Matt Rourke/Associated Press

Monsignor William J. Lynn.

PHILADELPHIA — Msgr. William J. Lynn, the first Roman Catholic Church official in the United States to be convicted of covering up sexual abuses by priests under his supervision, was sentenced Tuesday to three to six years in prison.

“You knew full well what was right, Monsignor Lynn, but you chose wrong,” Judge M. Teresa Sarmina of Common Pleas Court said as she imposed the sentence, which was just short of the maximum of three and a half to seven years. Monsignor Lynn must serve at least three years before he is eligible for parole.

Monsignor Lynn, 61, was found guilty on June 22 of child endangerment after a three-month trial that revealed efforts over decades by the Philadelphia archdiocese to play down accusations of child sexual abuse and avoid scandal. He was acquitted of conspiracy and a second child endangerment charge.

Monsignor Lynn served as secretary for clergy for the 1.5 million-member archdiocese from 1992 to 2004, recommending priest assignments and investigating abuse complaints. During the trial, prosecutors presented evidence that he had shielded predatory priests, sometimes transferring them to unwary parishes, and lied to the public to avoid bad publicity and lawsuits.

The conviction of a senior official, followed by a prison sentence, has reverberated among Catholic officials around the country, church experts said.

“I think this is going to send a very strong signal to every bishop and everybody who worked for a bishop that if they don’t do the right thing, they may go to jail,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. “They can’t just say ‘the bishop made me do it.’ That’s not going to be an excuse that holds up in court.”

In a three-minute statement before sentencing, Monsignor Lynn, dressed in a black clerical shirt and white collar, said: “I have been a priest for 36 years, and I have done the best I can. I have always tried to help people.”

Turning toward relatives of an abuse victim in the courtroom, he said, “I hope someday that you will accept my apology.”

But he did not comment on the broader accusations that he put children at risk by repeatedly protecting “monsters in clerical garb,” as Judge Sarmina described it at the hearing.

The sentence was a victory for the Philadelphia district attorney, R. Seth Williams, who said outside the courtroom, “Many people say that the maximum still would not have been enough.”

Monsignor Lynn’s lawyer, Thomas Bergstrom, called the sentence “unbalanced.” Last week, the defense argued that a long prison sentence would be “merely cruel and unusual.”

Prosecutors argued that the gravity of Monsignor Lynn’s crime — giving known sexual predators continued access to children, causing lifelong anguish and damage to some — was “off the charts.”

Monsignor Lynn’s lawyers said they would appeal the conviction, saying that the child endangerment law at the time did not apply to supervisors and that the judge erred in allowing testimony about accusations that were beyond the statute of limitations.

In a statement Tuesday, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia said that its procedures for protecting children had improved significantly since “the events some 10 years ago that were at the center of this trial.”

It acknowledged “legitimate anger in the broad community toward any incident or enabling of sexual abuse.” But it also described the sentence as overly harsh, saying “fair-minded people will question the severity.”

“We hope that when this punishment is objectively reviewed, it will be adjusted,” it said.

After the sentencing, Ann Casey, a friend of Monsignor Lynn for 36 years, said she believed he was a scapegoat and a victim of his intense faith in the archdiocese’s leaders. “It was his vow of obedience to the church that landed him this morning in jail,” she said.

During the trial, Monsignor Lynn’s lawyers argued that he had followed the instructions of Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, who was the archbishop of Philadelphia from 1988 to 2003 and who died in January.

Monsignor Lynn’s conviction was for lax oversight of one former priest, Edward V. Avery, who spent six months in a church psychiatric center in 1993 after an abuse episode. Doctors said he should be kept away from children. But Monsignor Lynn sent him to live in a rectory and did not warn parish officials.

In 1999, Mr. Avery engaged in oral sex with a 10-year-old altar boy. He pleaded guilty to the assault just before Monsignor Lynn’s trial and was sentenced to two and a half to five years in prison.

Jon Hurdle reported from Philadelphia, and Erik Eckholm from New York.

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Pennsylvania priest found guilty in landmark Catholic child abuse case

Monsignor William Lynn is the first U.S. church official to be branded a felon for covering up sexual abuse claims. Lynn, 61, was convicted on a single child endangerment count. The jury could not reach a verdict for Lynn’s co-defendant, Rev. James Brennan.


BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Friday, June 22, 2012, 8:26 PM

MATT ROURKE/AP

Pennsylvania Monsignor William Lynn is the first U.S. church official charged for allegedly helping an archdiocese cover up abuse claims.

PHILADELPHIA — A Roman Catholic church official was convicted of child endangerment but acquitted of conspiracy Friday in a landmark clergy-abuse trial, making him the first U.S. church official branded a felon for covering up 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, served as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, mostly under Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua.

"Many in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia hierarchy had dirty hands," Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said. "They failed to realize that the church is its people."

Williams said he did not have sufficient evidence last year to charge other officials, including Bevilacqua, who died in January at age 88.

Lynn 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 of only a single endangerment count, which carries a possible 3 1/2- to seven-year prison term.

The jury could not reach a verdict for Lynn's co-defendant, the Rev. James Brennan, who was accused of sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy in 1999.

BRYNN ANDERSON/AP

The jury could not reach a verdict for Rev. James J. Brennan, who is accused of sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy in 1999.

Despite Lynn's acquittal on the conspiracy charge, the trial exposed how deeply involved the late cardinal was in dealing with accused priests.

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 Lynn prepared, warning that the archdiocese had three diagnosed pedophiles, a dozen confirmed predators and another 20 possible abusers in its midst.

Church lawyers turned over a surviving copy of the list days after Bevilacqua died.

Lynn didn't react when the verdict was read, or acknowledge the siblings and other friends and relatives who have accompanied him to court for much of the three-month trial. Several of them were weeping.

The judge revoked his bail and he was taken to jail, although his lawyers plan to ask on Monday that he be granted house arrest until sentencing. No date was set, but the judge scheduled an Aug. 13 presentencing hearing.

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Philadelphia trial revives Catholic church sex-abuse crisis

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

Updated 46m ago

Ten years ago, the Catholic sex-abuse scandal dominated the headlines with horrific stories of priests preying on vulnerable youths and a church hierarchy more concerned with protecting clergy instead of kids.

Enlarge

By Matt Rourke, AP

Monsignor William Lynn is the first Roman Catholic church official in the U.S. to be charged with child endangerment.

Now, it's back. A Philadelphia jury is deliberating whether, for the first time, a high-ranking church official will be held criminally accountable.

However they rule, the case carries symbolic freight far heavier than the grim details in the trial of Monsignor William Lynn, former secretary for the clergy in the archdiocese. It revives the breadth and depth of the abuse crisis, its extraordinary costs and unending frustrations.

Lynn's trial brings the ugly mess to mind "like it was yesterday," said Mary Jane Doerr, associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office of Child and Youth Protection. "It's still shocking, the degree of damage a handful of priests have done. When will the numbers ever stop?"

The statistics are staggering:

•More than 6,100 accused priests since 1950, Doerr said. She draws the number from two reports: a 2011 analysis by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the latest annual report by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), which tracks U.S. Catholic statistics.

•More than 16,000 victims, chiefly teenage boys, since 1950. However, "since there is no national data base tracking clergy abuse, we may never really know how many victims there are across all the dioceses and across time," said Mary Gautier, senior researcher for CARA.

AP file photo

Former priest John Geoghan, left, is shown at his sex abuse trial in 2002.

•$2.5 billion in settlements and therapy bills for victims, attorneys fees, and costs to care for priests pulled out of ministry from 2004 to 2011, according to the CARA report released in April.

The Lynn trial brings up all the worst aspects of a scandal rooted decades before, when victims were ignored — or blamed — and accused priests were quietly shuffled to unsuspecting parishes across town or across the country.

During Lynn's 10-week trial on charges of child endangerment and conspiracy, prosecutors dialed back to 1994. That's when Lynn said he compiled a list of 35 then-active priests who had been either convicted or accused of sexual abuse of minors. But he buried the list after his boss, the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, a fierce traditionalist and canon lawyer, ordered it destroyed. Nothing was done and the priests remained in their posts.

If convicted, Lynn, 61, could face a sentence of 10 to 21 years.

The defense calls Lynn an obliging minor player, without the power to remove priests, who was cowed into silence by Bevilacqua.

It was a time when "there were no heroes," said political scientist Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

"No one said to his bishop. 'No, you can't transfer this priest to another parish. If you do that, I resign. Get yourself another priest personnel director,' " Reese said.

2003 AP file photo

Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua died days before damning evidence was found at the Philadelphia archdiocese he led, and weeks before his top aide went on trial on child-endangerment charges.

In 1992, seven years after a multimillion dollar settlement in an Louisiana abuse case, the bishops issued voluntary guidelines for dealing with allegations of abuse. "Some bishops 'got it' faster than others. Some never did," Reese said.

The most glaring example of the latter was then-Archbishop of Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, who made Boston the epicenter of the scandal.

In January 2002, the Boston Globe began its coverage of defrocked priest John Geoghan, a serial abuser of 138 children who was on trial for molesting a 10-year-old boy. (Geoghan, who was convicted, was murdered in prison in 2003 by a fellow inmate.)

The Globe used his case to launch a large investigation into clergy sex-abuse cases and invited victims to come forward. Reaction was volcanic.

Within months of the Globe series, victims by the thousands were revealed in city after city.

The overwhelming majority of bishops who served between 1950 and 2002 have died or retired.

There's only Lynn, "a yes man at the bottom of the totem pole, left holding the bag for the church's collective sins," said Ralph Cipriano, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter and a critic of the archdiocese who is blogging the trial daily.

The monsignor testified he believed that the will of God works through the bishop in dealing with priests, according to Cipriano.

David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), called Lynn's trial "one of the most significant and promising developments in the past decade … I just have to believe it has caused some number of chancery officials to tell their bishops, 'I won't lie for you any more.' " If not, Clohessy said, "we'll be having this same talk 20 years from now."

University of Santa Clara psychology professor Thomas Plante, who serves on the National Review Board, has co-authored a collection of essays on lessons learned — and goals still unmet — since 2002.

The Lynn trial, Plante said, "is enough to make even the most devout, daily-Mass-attending Catholics out there, throw up their hands and say, 'Why can't these guys get their act together?' "

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