Monsignor Lynn gets prison sentence of three to six years

John P. Martin
Philadelphia Inquirer
July 24, 2012

Msgr. William J. Lynn was sentenced Tuesday to three to six years in state prison by a judge who said he turned a blind eye while "monsters in clerical garb" sexually abused children, devastating families and shaking the Catholic Church across Philadelphia and beyond.

Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina said she believed Lynn was once the kind and selfless parish priest that his supporters so passionately described. But as the aide whom Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua tapped to investigate clergy sex abuse, Lynn chose to protect the church over victims, she said.

"You knew full well what was right, Msgr. Lynn, but you chose wrong," she told him.

The sentence, the first for a Catholic leader for enabling clergy sex abuse, fell just short of the maximum seven-year term Philadelphia prosecutors had sought. It was hailed by victims and advocates who had complained that church officials long eluded justice for accommodating or concealing priests' attacks on children.

Lynn's lawyers had urged probation or a county jail term, and were disappointed at a sentence they said was disproportionate to the defendant and his crime, a single count of child endangerment.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia, which paid for Lynn's defense but has been largely silent about his case, also questioned the sentence.

"We hope that when this punishment is objectively reviewed, it will be adjusted," it said in a statement.

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Under state guidelines, Lynn will have to serve at least three years in prison before being eligible for parole.

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"There are very, very few people that we let get close to our children - and Msgr. Lynn is one of them," said Matt Coyne, the father of seven children and a parishioner at St. Joseph Church in Downingtown, where Lynn was pastor from 2004 until his arrest last year. "That is a good man . . . welcome in my home anytime."

Nearly as many courtroom seats were filled by relatives of the former Northeast Philadelphia altar boy who became the central victim the case. The man, now in his 20s, was sexually abused by Avery in 1999 at St. Jerome Church.

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The judge said she believed that Lynn had drafted a now-infamous list of suspected and confirmed pedophile priests in the archdiocese in 1994 because he really did want to address the problem of priests abusing children.

But somewhere along the way, she said, his goal shifted to protecting the church.

The judge threw at Lynn a quote from Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, the new leader of the 1.5-million member archdiocese: "Sooner or later, evil always undoes itself. Sooner or later its consequences become too painful for sensible people to bear."

The monsignor, she said, learned to ignore the evil and tune out the victims. He deserved such a stiff term, Sarmina told him, because of "your support and facilitation of monsters in clerical garb . . . who destroyed the souls of children."

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The sentence marked the end of the trial phase but not of the legal proceedings. Lynn and the archdiocese are defendants in at least nine civil suits filed by alleged abuse victims, including the man assaulted by Avery.

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Terry McKiernan, the president of the watchdog group BishopAccountability.org, said the sentence was important because it could embolden other prosecutors to pursue similar cases.

"For the first time we have a model for prosecuting the two crimes of clergy abuse," he said, "the clerical abuse of children and the enabling of that abuse by church officials."

Full article at the Philadelphia Inquirer