Jury Convicts Oblate Priest of Childhood Sexual Abuse
“The Philadelphia Inquirer” and “The New York Times” report today on the criminal conviction yesterday for indecent assault, corruption of a minor, child endangerment and conspiracy of a 66 year old priest of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, a world-wide Order of priests of the Roman Catholic Church.
The picture of a broadly smiling District Attorney in the “Inquirer” says it all for survivors of childhood sexual abuse after this trial of a then 10 year old altar boy whose life was destroyed by this priest and whose lawyer viciously attacked him from the stand using every trick in the Roman Catholic Church play book to destroy him.
The DA thanked the jury for holding this priest accountable despite the dirty tricks of his lawyers. The defense here far surpassed the attacks on the 10 victims of Jerry Sandusky in the Penn State trial and the now 24 year old victim, known as Billy Doe, is to be commended for his courage in withstanding all the attacks on his character. He was called a money grabbing liar, a drug addict, and every other name in the book to try to distract the jury from its solemn task. When are the churches lawyers going to learn that character assassination and lies are not going to carry the day with American juries?
This was not an isolated incident by a rogue Oblate priest who teach in Philadelphia, Delaware, North Carolina, India and elsewhere in the world. The misconduct of 12 other Oblates in the Mid-Atlantic region is set forth in chapter 3 of my book “When Priests Become Predators: Profiles of Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors” (2012) and Billy Doe should be added to the list of courageous survivors who have stood up to the world-wide power of the Church and defeated it.
The stories can be found at –
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/us/philadelphia-priest-and-ex-teacher-guilty-in-abuse-case.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0&pagewanted=print
http://philly.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
Subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.