Philadelphia Church Official Sentenced to 3 to 6 Years in PrisonPhiladelphia Church Official Sentenced to 3 to 6 Years in Prison - NYTimes.com:
Philadelphia Church Official Sentenced to at Least 3 Years in Prison
By JON HURDLE and ERIK ECKHOLM
PHILADELPHIA — Msgr. William J. Lynn, the first Roman Catholic official in the United States to be convicted of covering up sexual abuses by priests under his supervision, was sentenced to three to six years in prison on Tuesday.
Matt Rourke/Associated Press
Monsignor William J. Lynn.
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“You knew full well what was right, Monsignor Lynn, but you chose wrong,” said Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina as she imposed the sentence, which was just short of the maximum of three and a half to seven years.
Monsignor Lynn, 61, a former Cardinal’s aide, was found guilty on June 22 of one count of endangering a child, 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.
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 new parishes, and lied to the public to avoid bad publicity and lawsuits.
The conviction of Monsignor Lynn, now punctuated 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 Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow of 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 he heard his sentence, 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.”
He said that he respected the verdict of the jury, and he apologized to the abuse victim in the case at the center of his conviction. He turned toward relatives of the victim in the courtroom and said, “I hope some day 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 sentencing.
The sentence was a victory for the Philadelphia district attorney who said, in at impromptu news conference outside the courtroom, “Many people say that the maximum still would not have been enough.”
But Monsignor Lynn’s lead defense lawyer, Thomas Bergstrom, called the sentence “unbalanced.”
Last week, the defense team asked the judge to spare Monsignor Lynn from prison and instead sentence him to probation and work-release or house arrest. They argued in a memorandum that a long prison sentence would be “merely cruel and unusual,” and “would serve no purpose at all.”
But prosecutors urged the judge to impose the maximum penalty. They told the court last week that the gravity of Monsignor Lynn’s crime — giving known sexual predators continued access to children, causing lifelong anguish and damages to some — was “off the charts.” They wrote that Monsignor Lynn had refused to accept responsibility and had an “apparent lack of remorse for anyone but himself.”
Monsignor Lynn’s lawyers have promised to appeal the conviction, saying that the child endangerment law at the time of the events in question did not apply to supervisors, and that the judge erred in allowing testimony about Monsignor Lynn’s handling of priests who were accused of sexual abuse outside the statute of limitations.
Ann Casey, who attended the sentencing and said she had been a friend of Monsignor Lynn for 36 years, said she believed that he was a scapegoat and a victim of his intense faith in the leaders of the archdiocese. “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 tried to protect children, but that his powers were limited and that he had followed the instructions of the cardinal at the time, Anthony J. Bevilacqua. But prosecutors argued that Monsignor Lynn played a central role in deciding how to handle complaints against priests and that “following orders” was no defense.
Monsignor Lynn’s conviction was for lax oversight of one former priest who had a known history of abuse, but was allowed to continue in ministry. The former priest, Edward V. Avery, now 69, spent six months in a church psychiatric center in 1993 after an abuse episode, and doctors said he should be kept away from children. But Monsignor Lynn, though aware of this history, sent him to live in a parish rectory and did not warn parish officials.
In 1999, Mr. Avery undressed with a 10-year-old altar boy, told him that God loved him and had him engage in oral sex. Mr. Avery pleaded guilty to the assault just before Monsignor Lynn’s trial began and was sentenced to two and a half to five years in prison.
Monsignor Lynn was acquitted of a conspiracy charge and of a child endangerment charge involving another priest.
But the prosecutors, in their sentencing recommendation last week, said that Monsignor Lynn’s handling of Father Avery “was no aberration,” but rather “part of a continuous, systematic practice of retaining abusive priests in ministry, with continued access to minors, while taking pains to avoid scandal or liability for the archdiocese.”
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