More pedophilia scandal in Pennsylvania, Secret Sex-Crime files, & trial this winter:
The five co-defendants sit close enough to shake hands in the Philadelphia courtroom, but they never once acknowledge one another. Father James Brennan, a 47-year-old priest accused of raping a 14-year-old boy, looks sad and stooped in a navy sweater, unshaven and sniffling. Edward Avery, a defrocked priest in his sixties, wears an unsettlingly pleasant expression on his face, as though he's mentally very far away. He and two other defendants – the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, also in his sixties, and Bernard Shero, a former Catholic schoolteacher in his forties – are accused of passing around "Billy," a fifth-grade altar boy. According to the charges, the three men raped and sodomized the 10-year-old, sometimes making him perform stripteases or getting him drunk on sacramental wine after Mass.
Heinous as the accusations are, the most shocking – and significant – are those against the fifth defendant, Monsignor William Lynn. At 60, Lynn is portly and dignified, his thin lips pressed together and his double chin held high. In a dramatic fashion statement, he alone has chosen to wear his black clerical garb today, a startling reminder that this is a priest on trial, a revered representative of the Catholic Church, not to mention a high-ranking official in Philadelphia's archdiocese. Lynn, who reported directly to the cardinal, was the trusted custodian of a trove of documents known in the church as the "Secret Archives files." The files prove what many have long suspected: that officials in the upper echelons of the church not only tolerated the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests but conspired to hide the crimes and silence the victims. Lynn is accused of having been the archdiocese's sex-abuse fixer, the man who covered up for its priests. Incredibly, after a scandal that has rocked the church for a generation, he is the first Catholic official ever criminally charged for the cover-up.
"All rise," the court crier intones as the judge enters, and Lynn stands, flanked by his high-powered lawyers, whose hefty fees are being paid by the archdiocese. The implications of the trial are staggering for the church as a whole. In sheltering abusive priests, Lynn wasn't some lone wolf with monstrous sexual appetites, as the church has taken to portraying priests who have molested children. According to two scathing grand-jury reports, protocols for protecting rapists in the clergy have been in place in Philadelphia for half a century, under the regimes of three different cardinals. Lynn was simply a company man, a faithful bureaucrat who did his job exceedingly well. His actions were encouraged by his superiors, who in turn received orders from their superiors – an unbroken chain of command stretching all the way to Rome. In bringing conspiracy charges against Lynn, the Philadelphia district attorney is making a bold statement: that the Catholic hierarchy's failure to protect children from sexual abuse isn't the fault of an inept medieval bureaucracy, but rather the deliberate and criminal work of a cold and calculating organization. In a very real sense, it's not just Lynn who is on trial here. It's the Catholic Church itself.
The deluge of sexual-abuse cases in America's largest religious denomination began in 1985, when a Louisiana priest was sentenced to 20 years in prison after admitting to sexually abusing 37 boys. But it wasn't until 2002, when civil suits in Boston revealed that Cardinal Bernard Law had shielded rapist priests, that the extent of the scandal became widely known. In Germany, the church is overwhelmed by hundreds of alleged victims, and investigations are under way in Austria and the Netherlands. In Ireland, the government recently issued a scathing report that documents how Irish clergy – with tacit approval from the Vatican – covered up the sexual abuse of children as recently as 2009.
Battered by civil suits and bad press, the church has responded with a head-spinning mix of contrition and deflection, blaming anti-Catholic bias and the church's enemies for paying undue attention to the crisis. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops helped fund a $1.8 million study of sex-abuse cases against priests, but the results read like a mirthless joke: To lower the number of clergy classified as "pedophiles," the report redefines "puberty" as beginning at age 10 – and then partially blames the rise in child molesting on the counterculture of the 1960s. The church also insists that any sex crimes by priests are a thing of the past. "The abuse crisis," the study's lead author concluded, "is over.
That echoed statements by Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, who went on 60 Minutes declaring the scandal "nothing less than hideous" and then, with a sweep of his hand, announced, "That's over with!" Dolan, in turn, sounded a lot like Bishop Wilton Gregory, the former president of the USCCB, who framed the lie more eloquently: "The terrible history recorded here is history." That was in 2004, seven years ago.
Given how the innermost workings of Catholic culture have long been cloaked in secrecy, the case in Philadelphia offers a rare opportunity to understand why the cover-up of sexual abuse has continued for so long, despite the church's repeated promises of reform. The answer, in large part, lies in the mindset of the church's rigid hierarchy, which promotes officials who are willing to do virtually anything they're told, so long as it's in God's name. "It's almost like the type of stuff you see in cult behavior," says a former Philadelphia priest who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. "Someone on the outside would say, 'That's crazy.' But when you're on the inside, you say, 'It's perfectly right, because everything is divinely inspired.' If you have a monopoly on God, you can get away with anything.
Long before he became the guardian of the church's secrets, Bill Lynn was a boy with a higher calling. In the fall of 1968, after graduating from Bishop McDevitt High School in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Lynn arrived at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, a stately campus whose soaring chapels, somber libraries and marble sculptures with heads bowed in prayer gave off an aura of reverence, history and costly precision. Lynn, a friendly, overweight boy whose acne-scarred face was topped with jet-black hair, was ready to begin his eight-year path to priestly ordination, a process the church calls "formation."
At St. Charles, Lynn was plunged into an environment in which every moment was accounted for. Strict rules governed all aspects of life, especially the personal. Besides the obvious prohibitions on sexual contact – including with oneself, or even in one's imagination – no seminarian was allowed to get too close with his peers, since he was to concentrate on developing bonds with God and the church. Seminary is a form of military-style indoctrination, molding men to think institutionally, not individually. "It's like a brainwashing, almost," says Michael Lynch, who attended St. Charles for nine years but was rejected for priesthood after repeatedly butting heads with his superiors. Lynch recalls a priest barking at his class, "We own you! We own your body, we own your soul!
The goal of priesthood is a lofty one: a man placed on a pedestal for his community to revere, an alter Christus – "another Christ" – who can literally channel the power of Jesus and help create the perfect society intended by God. To model that perfection and elevate themselves above the sinful laity, clergy adopt a vow of celibacy, which has served as a centerpiece of Catholic priesthood since the 12th century. It's a tall order to sculpt chaste, living incarnations of Jesus out of the sloppy clay of your average 18-year-old male. Even many of those who wind up being ordained fail to maintain their chastity: According to a 1990 study by psychologist Richard Sipe, only half of all priests adhere to their vows of celibacy. It is not just the sex-abuse epidemic the church seeks to deny, but sex itself.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-catholic-churchs-secret-sex-crime-files-20110906#ixzz1e1xz3NFm
---------------
PEDOPHILE SEX RING AT PENN STATE?
IS THIS A PEDOPHILE SEX RING
By Jon Rappoport
www.nomorefakenews.com
November 10, 2011.
MarkMadden, a Pennsylvania radio host, wrote a piece about Jerry Sandusky, the accused Penn State pedophile, back in April, while a grand jury was deciding whether to indict Sandusky.
Madden alerted readers that something very nasty might leap out at them soon. Well, now it has. Sandusky has been indicted on 40 counts of child abuse. For years, he was Joe Paterno’s assistant football coach at Penn State.
And Paterno, and the school’s athletic director, and the school president have all been fired, because they were told (in one form or another) about Sandusky raping a young boy in the Penn State locker room shower, and they didn’t make sure the cops knew about it and took action.
Well today. Madden, this radio host, has more to say. He states there is a chance that Sandusky, who has been running a foundation to help young kids, has been pimping some of these kids out to rich Penn State donors.
I was speculating about this to a friend last night. I was also telling him about the mysterious case of Ray Gricar, the local prosecutor who considered filing charges against Sandusky back in 1998, when the first report came in accusing Sandusky of washing two naked boys in a shower. Gricar eventually decided not to prosecute.
No one can ask Gricar about his reasoning now, because he disappeared a few years ago, after leaving his home to do a few routine errands.
Eventually, his car was found. Inside the car was his cell phone. His wallet and keys were gone.
Sometime later, his laptop was found in a river, with the hard drive missing.
Sometime later, the hard drive was found in the river bank, but it was too damaged to collect data from.
Police, at Gricar’s home, examined his desk computer, and discovered that Gricar (or someone) had been doing searches on how to disable a hard drive.
<
Gricar has never been found.
What was so important on the hard drive? Evidence of wider pedophile activity?
Did Gricar commit suicide? Was he murdered?
Jerry Sandusky, the accused pedophile, was once one of the most respected assistant college football coaches in America. When he abruptly retired, in 1999, people were shocked. Equally strange, no college since that time has signed him up to coach.
But since 1999, Sandusky has had access to Penn State football facilities, and was seen there as recently as last week.
Sandusky’s foundation for at-risk kids, The Second Mile, is well known. It has major funding. It’s also, of course, a perfect setting for a pedophile.
Nothing has been proved in court against Sandusky. There could be a trial, there could be a plea bargain.
Yesterday, several sports writers, in the wake of the firings at Penn State, said, “Let the healing begin.” They always do. They always refer to sports programs as “the point of pride” for a big university. As if without that religious component, the whole institution would go down the drain. Well, now they may have to wait for the healing. Because if this latest suggestion about pimping out kids to rich donors is true, football will fade out. The University will crumble, and that’s just for starters.
There will be secret payoffs, certain men will be boarding planes out of the country, various cover-up crimes will be committed. There will be massive stonewalling.
Keep watching. See if this accusation of pimping kids to rich men is dismissed as irresponsible incitement…and vanishes with no follow-up, no investigation.
Jon Rappoport
www.nomorefakenews.com
'via Blog this'
