With all of the brouhaha re: the Scotus decisions, some other trials i’ve been watching have sort of been lost in the shuffle. So an update on some of these -
1) The William Lynn trial in Philly. Monsignor Lynn was an assistant to Cardinal Bevilacqua, and is the first Catholic official on trial, not for molesting children himself, but for child endangerment. Essentially, was responsible for transferring accused pedophile priests to other parishes. Lynn oversaw clergy abuse complaints under Bevilacqua, who conviniently rolled a 7 in January, the day after he was informed he would have to testify.
The judge in the trial allowed prosecutors to spend most of the 3 months of testimony concerning sex abuse accusations of 20 priests not directly related to the Lynn case. So aired in the court and a matter of public record now.
Lynn was acquitted of endangering a victim of a Fr. Brennan, and also of conspiring with another accused priest, Fr. Avery, to endanger children. He was convicted of endangering Avery’s victim, and is currently in prison awaiting sentencing facing 3 1/2 to 7 years. Lynn may be released to house arrest if the judge is convinced that he wouldn’t seek refuge in the Vatican or elsewhere, a la Bernie Law. He’s expected to appeal, and even if successful, the testimony of the victims is availiable for any to see.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/pa-monsignor-seeks-prison-release-plans-appeal-16686109
2) The William Lynch trial in San Jose. Mr. Lynch is accused of 2 felony counts of assault and elder abuse. He entered a retirement home and pummelled 67-year old retired Catholic priest Jerold Lindner. The priest sodomized Lynch on a camping trip when he was 7, and forced Lynch and his brother, 4, to orally copulate with each other. The brothers won $625,000 in a settlement from the Catholic church in 1997, and the church has paid millions of dollars to other Lindner victims.
There is no dispute that the assault by Lynch on Lindner occurred, and little doubt that the rape of Lynch and his brother occurred. Rather, Lynch, fully aware of the risks (that could result of his imprisonment of up to 4 years) is seeking a public airing of the circumstances of his abuse as a child. As well as a protest of the statute of limitations that currently prevent abuse charges from being prosecuted.
Go Mr. Lynch.
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/South-Bay-assault-case-puts-priest-abuse-on-trial-3674724.php
And the Catholic church is fretting over their delicate consciences offended at being forced to provide contraception to employees. If i were a cynical sort of person, which i’m not as that would be churlish, i might think that they were panicked at the prospect of running out of fodder.
3) Jerry Sandusky trial. Well, it didn’t take long to convict serial child sex abuser Sandusky. But some purported emails from the sainted head coach Joe Paterno (also conveniently now off this coil) may show that he was in on the coverup. From SF Gate -
“E-mails have been uncovered by NBC. Three scared sheep – Penn State’s president, vice president and athletic director – were going to alert the real authorities to the possible misdeeds of Jerry Sandusky, until the athletic director spoke with Paterno and persuaded the other two Sheep not to be so rash.
Subsequently, at least four more young boys were molested by Sandusky.
Paterno apparently persuaded the group to go easy on old Jerry. The athletic director, Tim Curley, e-mailed the other Sheep, “If Sandusky is cooperative, we would work with him.”
Fuck me, it’s just a fucking game. Makes the previous corruption of the basketball program at my own alma mater look positively benign. That was just about money and grades. Wtf.
Exactly. I’m rather familiar with how the church treats things as a game. “How many assholes can dance on the head of a child?” might have been an interesting question 7 or 8 hundred years ago, but now…not so much.
Glad never to have lost the innate agnosticism/skepticism/nihilism/existentialism, even at the height of what might have been a rather useful religiosity.
I sort of kept up with the Penn State thing. It wasn’t made anything of (but I think it should have been) when one witness for the defence apparently claimed it was both commonplace and normal for older adult coaches to shower with the kids.
Really?
I went to an all-boys school (as I’ve said before, I think, run rather on somewhat old-fashioned public [Brit. Eng.] school lines) and while I think most of us had a fairly good clue about which one or two teachers were gay and which liked to cop an occasional discreet feel, there’d have been ructions if any of them went into the showers with us. It certainly wouldn’t have been considered ‘normal’.
Now I suspect I’m going to get the reaction I got from a friend. . I wouldn’t want to deny egregious cases have occurred, but I do wonder if the whole notion of ‘the predatory gay’ which looks to me has powered a lot of these prosecutions/investigations isn’t actually fuelled by a certain amount of bigotry?
Perhaps it was unusual, but when I was at school, it was fairly well-known amongst us which priests were a bit too familiar with their choirboys, and which were to be avoided if you were on your own. (And that wasn’t a Catholic school, even.) I’ve been struck by how many of these accusers appear only after 20 years or more. Surely, people in the community must have known? Hell, I was (rather obscurely, I admit, I was only 10 or thereabouts) warned off a man who lived down the lane, whose behaviour around young boys was questionable.
I found out what was so questionable when I got to secondary school. . .and also found out that the older boys around there had long been passing on a kind of discreet ‘neighbourhood watch’ scheme over the younger ones that I’d never been aware of. And (I suspect) nor were our parents.
Squirrel -
Big difference between gay and pedophile. This is one of the problems in letting gay men adopt, some folks assume that they’re the same. Gay is attracted to other men, obviously, but this is different than a man attracted to children. (There is another term for men attracted to adolescents which escapes me for the moment).
People, parents even, don’t want to hear what they don’t want to hear. Even if they do sort of know what they know. Although i think folks have probably woken up to the priest thing now. My nephew (around 10) is in the boy scouts. They’re so careful now about going out camping and on trips, can’t leave men / dads alone with the kiddies now.
When we first moved up here i was around 13, and we went to the local pediatric group. Had a reputation for funny stuff, and sure enough when i went, one pulled something. Pisses me off still to even think about it (rather minor in comparison to what these kids went through). And yet everyone still brought their kids to them.
Christ on a stick! If any of the dodgy priests or sadistic coaches at my (Catholic) high school had tried that (35 years ago!) it would have been no less a scandal than if a male teacher had wandered into the girls’ shower block.
Commonplace and normal for a completely twisted and corrupted regime, sure.
Bluth,
I dunno. It was common in my (rural, public [US]) junior high and high schools (starting maybe 1960) and nobody thought anything of it. Coaches get sweaty too, and there was never the vaguest hint of anything peculiar, though their presence did cut down on the towel snapping.
Nat,
Maybe because my high school was in a provincial backwater, the head of the school, who was a very tough old nun, knew very well what sort of priests she had been saddled with, and read them the riot act.
Or maybe they knew better than to risk the towel snapping.
Tomasky has a good piece up on the Penn State part.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/02/paterno-penn-state-and-civic-morality.html
Pornstar:
Word is pederast.
(Squirrel remembers his Greek literature from school. Didn’t read it in Greek, though . . .And Catullus and Martial, though, being a boys’ school, their raunchier poems weren’t officially on the syllabus.)
Update -
Mr. William Lynch was acquitted.
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Alleged-rape-victim-acquitted-in-priest-assault-3686581.php