The 20-year criminal investigation of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia has come to a quiet end with the misdemeanor plea of an aging cleric.
FILE Monsignor William Lynn arrives for a preliminary hearing in his retrial of his child endangerment case at the Center for Criminal Justice in Philadelphia, March 28, 2017. Lynn, the longtime secretary for clergy, was accused of sending a known predator, named on a list of problem priests he had prepared for Cardinal Bevilacqua, to an accusers northeast Philadelphia parish.
“He lost 10 years of his life, 10 years of his priestly life,” said defense lawyer Thomas Bergstrom, speaking of the decade since Lynn's conviction. “It’s a travesty. It’s an absolute travesty.” The trial judge allowed nearly two dozen other priest-abuse victims to testify about abuse they had suffered in the archdiocese over a half century. An appeals court later said their weeks of testimony over uncharged acts were unfair to Lynn — who some saw as a scapegoat for the church, given that the bishops and cardinals above him were never charged.
A spokesperson for District Attorney Larry Krasner, who inherited the case from his predecessors, called Lynn's unannounced Nov. 2 plea “the appropriate path for bringing finality and closure to the victims, who have endured retraumatization throughout the legal process for years" and said they did not want to face another trial.
In recent years, prosecutors were not sure they could get the trial accuser — a policeman’s son who testified to his long struggle with addiction — back in court for the retrial, complicating their trial strategy. Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington, the lead trial prosecutor in 2012, had said he could try the case without a victim by arguing that Lynn had placed “a bomb” in the parish, whether or not it went off.
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20-year church abuse probe ends with monsignor's quiet pleaThe 20-year criminal investigation of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia has come to a quiet end with the misdemeanor plea of an aging cleric.
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20-year church abuse probe ends with Monsignor William Lynn’s quiet pleaThe 20-year criminal investigation of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia has come to a quiet end with the misdemeanor plea of an aging cleric.
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