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First senior US Catholic official found guilty of covering up sexual abuse

Former cardinal’s aide tasked with investigating abuse claims faces up to seven years in prison for endangering children.

Catholic Monsignor William Lynn (r) entering the court in Philadelphia
Catholic Monsignor William Lynn (r) entering the court in Philadelphia. Photograph: Getty Images

A Roman Catholic priest in Philadelphia has become the highest-ranking US church official to be found guilty of covering up child sex abuse claims.

Monsignor William Lynn, who supervised hundreds of priests and was an adviser to the Archbishop of Philadelphia, was convicted of endangering children by a jury. He was acquitted of a second count of endangerment and conspiracy, but could still face up to seven years in jail. It is likely that he will appeal the verdict.

This is another landmark in the ongoing efforts by prosecutors and victims’ groups to secure convictions in religious abuse cases, not just because of Lynn’s seniority in the church, but because he has been found guilty of endangering children through failings in his administrative and investigative duties, rather than because he had any direct contact with abuse.

Lynn was in charge of around 800 priests in the US’s sixth-largest, and was, as Al Jazeera reports, accused of covering up abuse scandals by “transferring priests to unsuspecting parishes”. He was also in charge of investigating sex abuse claims in the archdiocese betwenn 1992 and 2004.

As I wrote earlier this week in relation to the $28m settlement awarded to an abuse victim in a case involving US Jehovah’s Witnesses, these kind of cases and convictions, horrible as the details are, are to be welcomed. Lyon’s case is particularly important because it demonstrates that even an organisation as big as the Catholic church will be held accountable, and that individuals who try and use an instition to conceal wrongdoing will be discovered.

14 comments

freedemocrat new stateman's picture

Caroline crampton is over-enthusiastic in claiming that "even an institution as big as the Roman Catholic church is being held accountable". Not so. At least not yet by a long way. This paedophile-stuffed, tax-dodging organisation for fleecing the credulous of their income and estates using fairy stories" had Nation State stutus granted to it by the Italian fascist dictator Mussolini who ended his political career hanging upside down on a lamppost. This bogus diplomatic immunity needs to be removed and Joseph Ratzinger the ex-hitler youth trained pope arrested and put in the dock. Then we will know that the English judge who claimed "Be ye high or low the law is above you" was correct in his view of the Law.

freedemocrat new stateman's picture

Caroline crampton is over-enthusiastic in claiming that "even an institution as big as the Roman Catholic church is being held accountable". Not so. At least not yet by a long way. This paedophile-stuffed, tax-dodging organisation for fleecing the credulous of their income and estates using fairy stories" had Nation State stutus granted to it by the Italian fascist dictator Mussolini who ended his political career hanging upside down on a lamppost. This bogus diplomatic immunity needs to be removed and Joseph Ratzinger the ex-hitler youth trained pope arrested and put in the dock. Then we will know that the English judge who claimed "Be ye high or low the law is above you" was correct in his view of the Law.

New statesman freedemocrat's picture

Caroline crampton is over-enthusiastic in claiming that "even an institution as big as the Roman Catholic church is being held accountable". Not so. At least not yet by a long way. This paedophile-stuffed, tax-dodging organisation for fleecing the credulous of their income and estates using 2fairy stories" had Nation State stutus granted to it by the Italian fascist dictator Mussolini who ended his political career hanging upside down on a lamppost. This bogus diplomatic immunity needs to be removed and Joseph Ratzinger the ex-hitler youth trained pope arrested and put in the dock. Then we will know that the English judge who claimed "Be ye high or low the law is above you" was correct in his view of the Law.

blinkers's picture

I never knew he played baseball!

now you know's picture

:-p

Davidaslindsay's picture

Next up, then, Peter Tatchell, who would lower the age of consent to 14 and thus legalise almost every act of which any Catholic priest has ever been so much as accused, and who wrote in The Guardian (26th June 1997) that:

The positive nature of some child-adult relations is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of 9 to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy. While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.

The Guardian printed that. Next up, then, The Guardian. In 2010, David Cameron offered Tatchell a peerage. Next up, then, David Cameron.

Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt ran the National Council for Civil Liberties when it was passing resolutions in support of the Paedophile Information Exchange and Paedophile Action for Liberation, and when it was publishing calls to legalise and destigmatise sex between adults and children. Hewitt went on to have overall responsibility for every social worker in England, while Harman’s pro-pederast past was explored in detail by Martin Beckford in the 9th March 2009 edition of the Daily Telegraph, but that newspaper was too spineless or too compromised to put it on the front page where it belonged, so the story was allowed to die, at least for the time being. Next up, then, Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt.

For many years, the recommended reading for postgraduate students of Criminology at the University of Cambridge included the 1980 book Paedophilia: The Radical Case, by Tom O’Carroll, chairman of the Paedophile Information Exchange, whose 1981 conviction for conspiracy to corrupt public morals through the contacts section of that organisation’s magazine was attacked a year later in the journal of the National Council for Civil Liberties by O’Carroll’s barrister, Peter Thornton, who is now a Queen’s Counsel and a senior circuit judge. Next up, then, the University of Cambridge, and His Honour Judge Peter Thornton QC.

Stephen Fry’s books, The Liar and The Hippopotamus, glorify sex between men and teenage boys, exactly the acts that have brought scandal on the Catholic Church. Next up, then, Stephen Fry. In its dramatic output, Channel 4 has been and remains a relentless, publicly owned campaigner in favour of such acts. Next up, then, successive Chairmen and Controllers of Channel 4.

Germaine Greer’s The Boy is a celebration of the sexual fetishisation of the adolescent male both by men and by women. Next up, them, Germaine Greer. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins describes having been sexually abused as a child as “an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience”. Next up, then, Richard Dawkins.

Philip Pullman’s famous trilogy concludes with sexual intercourse between two children aged about 12, and he has repeatedly denounced the absence of sexual content in the Narnia novels. Next up, then, Philip Pullman. Geoffrey Robertson QC made his name defending the Schoolkids’ Edition of Oz, whilehis wife, Katthy Lette, made hers writing explicit depictions of teenage sex. Next up, then, Geoffrey Robertson QC and Kathy Lette.

Plus all those who rushed to defend and to laud Roman Polanski. Plus all those in any way involved in Internet pornography, the principal, and highly commercial, sexual abuse of teenage boys in the world today. Plus all those who have taken us to, and who keep us at, war in Afghanistan are liable for wrongdoing. That war is in defence of the endemic abuse of boys, an abuse to which, whatever else may be said of the Taliban, they were very actively opposed and not without success in seeking to eradicate, whereas the regime that we have installed in their place actively colludes in it as surely as in the heroin trade.

Plus numerous Social Services Departments, which ran homes where at the same time as the Church was hushing up sex between men and teenage boys on the part of a small number of priests – and thus, however imperfectly, indicating disapproval of it – such behaviour was absolutely endemic, with major figures in that world publishing academic studies, used for many years in the training of social workers, which presented it as positively beneficial to both parties and therefore actively to be encouraged.

Plus the police, who long ago stopped enforcing the age of consent from 13 upwards; as with their non-enforcement of the drugs laws, one really does have to ask for whose benefit that is.

Among many, many, many others.

What’s that you say? They do not purport to be moral authorities? Really?

New statesman freedemocrat's picture

David,
In your infamy list you forgot to mention that the late Methodist reverend, lord Donald Soper chaired a committee of the "great and good" who recommended that the age of consent in the UK be lowered to 12 years.

New statesman freedemocrat's picture

David,
In your infamy list you forgot to mention that the late Methodist reverend, lord Donald Soper chaired a committee of the "great and good" who recommended that the age of consent in the UK be lowered to 12 years.

blinkers's picture

I have a son (alleged,which I am but will deny) in Caerphilly, works for a politician, I will not say he is PC, Independent, Labour, or Liberal, and his mother was carried to her grave by the police on the instructions of a woman of doubtful repute whom works as one of the Queen's representatives and as in the same Party herself,as both he and his mother were.

When I came out of hospital after several months, having both an ileostomy and a severe accident where my then wife was told I would never walk again, as had broken all metatarsals chipped my ankle in five places and had upwards broken heel, she turned around to the professor of orthopaedics and said "Oh I do nor want a cripple whom is a freak of nature with a bag", "As I want someone to support me in my lifestyle"! I blew her out of coming to hospital after that outburst.

When I got home I was there four days before she returned home, when I asked where she had been,"None of your business", Mid Winter and no coal fire. I then asked her where my son was, and she replied "he is living with his girlfriend","Whom I asked", "oh *****" she replied.

When I found out he was living in house with his 13 year old girlfriend with her parents permission, and my wife's she turned around and said" Do not worry as she is on the pill",and they don't mind".

I walked away from home with two walking sticks, just walked all away from the filth, and he is the political chair of a political Party in Caerphilly, yes he is respected.

When told his disabled wife whom he married for being her 'carer' and her money to keep him supported without work for sixteen years, as he has been most of his life, well he swung the system and he got full allowance including double car allowance for him and his wife, when down there four years ago she turned to him and said "can I have a bag of sweets as not had any for three weeks". I told her to take my grandchildren down the shop, get herself whatever she wanted and them too, when she came back he pocketed the money she had (off me) in change and said , "I have to go to a party conference in two weeks and need the money". He has since sent her to a mental unit, and divorced her because he wants another woman to keep his benefit going, as he always had on the side, so yes she was spent fodder, and he wanted someone to keep his allowance going when kicked off benefit for himself, as could work sixteen hours a day for a politician every four years.

He has since moved in with a former candidate as per phone and address; though have not spoken to the groomer since that time. Yes he wants another addition to the eleven children outside.marriage .

My fault as married for love and never saw evil in my wife, nor his, until old enough to discard them both.

Moral of the story:

wait until you are old enough to know what love is before you screw up your life - Luckily I have a woman within medical services and it took many years to find that love, some people never realise their husbands/wives/sons social negligence and support paedophilia, and political power.

She died two years ago, but at least had the support of the police she often mixed with in South Wales, as they took her to her grave.

Nice woman pillar of the community - carpetbagger and groomer!

jankaas's picture

your tactic of throwing so much sh*t at the wall that no sane human would bother to refute any of it is rather a bore David.

but at least it looks like you agree that this odious vile Catholic needs to be locked up for his crimes, and by default that means many more odious vile Catholics. or don't you think he was guilty and deserving of prison time?

p j wall's picture

GOOD!!, only another few hundred thousand priests to go?, and if there was any justice, the POPE should be in the dock!, he knowingly, knew of, and covered up for a lot of these Paedophiles!!!!.
And you wonder why many of us aren`t religeous?, with all these Child Molesting, Bigoted, Corrupt, Fraudsters in charge!!.

Danny Haszard's picture

The Jehovah’s Witnesses have a policy within their religion that protects pedophiles.

The official policy is that the elders of the “Church” are supposed to handle the matter internally, without contacting the police. They do this so that shame will not be brought on the religion.

It’s important that they keep a squeaky clean image to the public. Remember they believe they are the only “True” religion and all other Christian Churches are under the control of Satan. JW’s are not supposed to sue other JW’s or involve the police or courts.

They believe these are Satan’s organizations and any crime by a JW should be dealt with internally.The elders will contact the police ONLY if they’re forced to by state law. Otherwise they are forced to follow official policy from headquarters. Some states require that “priests” or “pastors” report child abuse to the authorities. If they are not forced to report them than they cover it up.
You might actually get a unreported pedophile knocking on your door next time they show up peddling pamphlets and selling “Eternal Life".
--
Danny Haszard *tell the truth don't be afraid*

John Cheese's picture

maybe Democrats Barney Frank & Chris Dodd could be his cellmates, I'd even chip in to buy them all matching puffy sleeve pirate shirts...

jankaas's picture

let's pray he is the 1st of many who will now have to serve time for their hideous crimes. Monsignor William Lynn acted like a pimp/dating agency for paedophiles.

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