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20-year church abuse probe ends with monsignor's quiet plea
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FILE – Monsignor William Lynn arrives for a preliminary hearing in his retrial of his child endangerment case at the Center for Criminal Justice in Philadelphia, March 28, 2017. Lynn, the longtime secretary for clergy, was accused of sending a known predator, named on a list of problem priests he had prepared for Cardinal Bevilacqua, to an accuser’s northeast Philadelphia parish. Lynn served nearly three years in state prison before appeals courts threw out his felony child endangerment conviction, and he pleaded no contest in November 2022 to a misdemeanor charge of failing to turn over records to the 2002 grand jury. - photo by AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File
Twenty years after city prosecutors convened a grand jury to investigate the handling of priest-abuse complaints within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the tortuous legal case came to an end with a cleric's misdemeanor no contest plea in a near-empty City Hall courtroom. Monsignor William Lynn, 71, had served nearly three years in state prison as appeals courts reviewed the fiery three-month trial that led to his felony child endangerment conviction in 2012. The verdict was twice overturned, leaving prosecutors pursuing the thinning case in recent years with a single alleged victim whose appearance in court was i n doubt.