Lynn: Only Bishop Could Move Accused Priests

A high-ranking church official accused of moving predator-priests to unwitting parishes took the stand in his own defense Wednesday, telling jurors in the groundbreaking clergy sex-abuse trial that he had no authority to make priest transfers.
 
Monsignor William Lynn said he also lacked authority to put a priest on leave or suspend him, and could only remove someone on one condition: “The only time I had that authority was if he admitted he had abused someone,” Lynn testified.
 
Asked who at the archdiocese could transfer or suspend a priest, Lynn replied, “Only the bishop, the cardinal.”
 
Lynn, 61, is the first Roman Catholic church official in the U.S. charged with a crime for his handling of complaints that priests were molesting children. Prosecutors spent 10 years investigating the Philadelphia archdiocese before bringing charges against Lynn, the point person for priest assignments as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004. No other church official in Philadelphia was charged.
 
Defense lawyers paint Lynn as a cog in the wheel of a vast bureaucracy and a scapegoat for the priest sexual-abuse crisis.
 
But prosecutors call him a key figure in policy decisions and the man who knew better than perhaps anyone the harrowing accounts of child sexual abuse buried in the church vaults, some at the hands of priests still in ministry.
 
Lynn's decision to take the stand Wednesday is risky, giving prosecutors a chance to interrogate him on cross-examination about his handling of 20 accused priest files. The cross-examination was expected Wednesday afternoon.
 
The dour expression Lynn has shown during nine weeks on trial softened when he took the stand, and he smiled warmly a few times as he answered questions from defense lawyer Thomas Bergstrom. Friends and relatives, several of them priests, filled four rows of seats behind the defense table.
 
Lynn described being tapped for the job by Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, and learning only afterward that he would be handling not just the needs of the archdiocese's 800 priests, but scores of sexual-abuse complaints kept in secret files.
 
“At first, I didn't know that was going to be part of it,” Lynn testified.
 
His administrative assistant, Maryanne Weicke, testified earlier that the job left Lynn “frustrated and sometimes very worn out.” He appeared shaken after meeting with alleged victims, Weicke said.
 
Lynn is specifically charged with endangering two accusers of then-priest Edward Avery and the Rev. James Brennan, both charged last year with sexual assault. Avery pleaded guilty in March to sexually assaulting an altar boy in 1999. Brennan is on trial for an alleged 1996 assault at his apartment.
 
Bergstrom walked Lynn through his handling of Avery's file, reminding jurors that Lynn was the one to find an overlooked complaint in the files and respond to the accuser, who was by then a doctor.
 
Lynn met with him in November 1992, and almost immediately confronted Avery and had him sent for an evaluation. Avery spent nine months at St. John Vianney, a church-affiliated psychiatric center in Downingtown, where doctors said he had an alcohol problem and other issues, but not any sexual disorders.
 
To Lynn, that meant “he would not be one preying on people,” he testified.
 
Still, the hospital recommended that Avery not minister to children.
 
Lynn said he pondered where Avery should work when he was released, and decided on a shrinking parish where he wouldn't need to help with the parochial school or altar boys. But Bevilacqua thought otherwise, and requested a chaplaincy job.
 
Lynn found him a spot at Nazareth Hospital, with residence at nearby St. Jerome's in northeast Philadelphia. That's where Avery sexually assaulted an altar boy in the sacristy.
 
Avery now is serving 2 1/2 to five years in prison.
 
Lynn faces up to 21 years in prison if convicted of two counts of child endangerment and conspiracy.