Philadelphia Postscript: Will the Guilty Verdict Lead to Lawsuits Elsewhere? | David F. Pierre, Jr. | Catholic World Report
The success of the case against Msgr. Lynn has been largely overstated in the media.
The single guilty verdict last month in the high-profile criminal abuse trial in Philadelphia was historic. Msgr. William J. Lynn became the first Catholic official in the United States to be convicted for the crime of allowing a priest suspected of abuse to continue in ministry with access to children.
“I thought I was helping people,” Msgr. Lynn testified during the trial. “I thought I was helping priests, and in those circumstances, I thought I was helping victims, as much as I could.”
But Lynn’s efforts were not enough. His failure with regard to one abusive priest convinced a jury that he was guilty of one of the charges of endangering the welfare of a child.
The verdict surely gave a sense of consolation and satisfaction to those who were so grievously harmed by criminal abusive clergy. Of this we must be mindful.
A groundbreaking precedent?
Many observers have declared that the guilty verdict will encourage other prosecutors across the country to pursue actions against Catholic officials for crimes committed years ago.
“This is the first time that someone responsible for the supervision has been held to that civil accountability,” Boston College’s Rev. Raymond Helmick, a Jesuit priest, told the Wall Street Journal after the verdict. “That is a precedent that may go very far. I’m sure all kinds of people are itching to bring criminal cases against many, many authorities, and we’ll have to see how far it goes.”
The notorious Church-suing attorney Jeff Anderson, based in Minnesota, similarly opined, “This trial is unprecedented; it has set a pathway and a standard for prosecutors across the United States.”
But are such observations correct?
Comments