PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The first U.S. church official convicted of covering up sex-abuse claims against Roman Catholic priests was sentenced Tuesday to three to six years in prison by a judge who said he "enabled monsters in clerical garb ... to destroy the souls of children."
Lynn, who handled priest assignments and child sexual assault complaints from 1992 to 2004, was convicted last month of felony child endangerment for his oversight of now-defrocked priest Edward Avery. Avery is serving a 2½- to five-year sentence for sexually assaulting an altar boy in church in 1999.
The judge said Lynn enabled "monsters in clerical garb ... to destroy the souls of children, to whom you turned a hard heart."
She believed he initially hoped to address the sex abuse problem and perhaps drafted a 1994 list of accused priests for that reason. But when Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua instead had the list destroyed, Lynn chose to remain in the job and obey his bishop — by keeping quiet — as children suffered, she said.
Prosecutors who spent a decade investigating sex abuse complaints kept in secret files at the archdiocese and issued two damning grand jury reports argue that Lynn and unindicted co-conspirators in the church hierarchy kept children in danger and the public in the dark.
"He locked away in a vault the names of pedophile priests. He locked in a vault the names of men that he knew had abused children. He now will be locked away for a fraction of the time he kept that secret vault," District Attorney Seth Williams said of Lynn.
Defense lawyers have long argued that the state's child endangerment statute, revised in 2007 to include those who supervise abusers, should not apply to Lynn since he left office in 2004. They also insist he did more than anyone at the archdiocese to meet with victims, get pedophile priests into treatment and send recommendations to the cardinal.
Lynn was the first U.S. church official convicted for his handling of abuse claims in the sex scandal that's rocked the Catholic church for more than a decade. But he might not be the last.
Bishop Robert Finn and the Kansas City diocese face a misdemeanor charge of failing to report suspected child sexual abuse. Both Finn and the diocese have pleaded not guilty and are set to go on trial next month.
http://news.yahoo.com/pa-monsignor-g...154117156.html
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As mentioned in an earlier posting, this is the first conviction of a member of the church hierarchy for following church policy. Still wondering if this is going to stop with him or if they plan to follow it up the chain of command.
The potential implications of this still kind of astound me.
I like that this is like an in your face corrective thing for the Catholic church. I hope it will go up the chain of command, and not stop at this rather low step of the ladder. God knows the Church needs a little more education seeing, back in 2009, they issued new psychological testing in seminaries by equating pedophilia with homosexuality. Sigh. Story here.
As a survivor, I am thankful for this beginning change in the collective consciousness to hold those with the power to stop it accountable for enforcing hierarchial policy.
Yet, there is also a part of me that is very aware that like AIDS "didnt exist" until Rock Hudson, sexual abuse "didnt exist" until it affected males. Then, it took on an entirely different meaning with entirely different strategies, and a shitload of lawyers with a new specialty.
No child should be subjected to sexual abuse or exploitation by anyone, in any position, or with any affliation. The gender of the child involved should not influence the vigor with which the problem is acknowledged or addressed.