Soap opera comparison in Sandusky trial and coaches showering with kids just isn’t normal, Jurors Report Split Over Church Abuse Charges

Soap opera comparison in Sandusky trial adds insult to tragedy
Alleged abuse victims weren’t characters on daytime drama — and coaches showering with kids just isn’t normal
John Kass June 20, 2012

….If you don’t think something’s wrong with an adult naked in a shower with kids, then you’re not a parent. But this week, Amendola put witnesses on the stand to say that it’s not unusual for grown men to take showers with children at Penn State. The witnesses said it was normal.

So we asked some experienced coaches if it was normal here, in Illinois.

“That type of thing is not part of any culture or system I’ve been in in high school or college or as a coach,” said Brett Detering, 1st vice president of the Illinois High School Football Coaches Association. “There are separate facilities for coaches and students.”

Detering is the head coach at Anna-Jonesboro High School in southern Illinois. He played football in high school and in college, and he’s been coaching for 17 years. And he doesn’t take showers with his players. He’s never taken showers with his players.

“I would say that’s just common sense,” Coach Detering said of not showering with his players. “How anyone could be confused about that is beyond me.”

John Elder, executive director of the Illinois Coaches Association, spent 40 years as a football coach at Alexis High School in western Illinois, and retired from coaching eight years ago. He played at Alexis as a boy.

“But it was not normal, even then, for coaches to shower with the team,” Elder said. “It wouldn’t have been done back in the day, and it definitely wouldn’t be done today.” http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-0620-20120620,0,4414967.column

Jurors Report Split Over Church Abuse Charges
By JON HURDLE and ERIK ECKHOLM June 20, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — In its 12th day of deliberations, the jury in the landmark trial of a Roman Catholic Church official accused of covering up sexual abuses by other priests said Wednesday that it was deadlocked on four of the five charges in the trial.

“We, the jury, are at a hung jury status on all charges except for one,” jurors said in a note that was read aloud by Judge M. Teresa Sarmina of the Court of Common Pleas.

The judge instructed the jury to keep trying to reach unanimous agreement on all five charges. The church official, Msgr. William J. Lynn, is accused of two counts of endangering the welfare of children and one of conspiracy. A priest, the Rev. James J. Brennan, faces charges of endangerment and attempted rape. Deliberations will resume on Friday.

Monsignor Lynn, 61, served as secretary for clergy for the 1.5 million-member Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2004, in charge of recommending jobs for priests and investigating charges of sexual abuse. He is the first church official in the United States to be tried on accusations of enabling the depredations of priests, rather than committing abuses himself. Prosecutors said he had repeatedly played down credible accusations of abuse, lied to inquiring parents and parish officials about predatory priests and reassigned them to unwary parishes.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/us/monsignor-lynn-jury-says-it-is-deadlocked.html

Etan Patz Case – Pedro Hernandez Charged With Second Degree Murder, Philadelphia Priest Trial: Monsignor William Lynn Takes Stand In Own Defense

Pedro Hernandez Charged With Second Degree Murder In Etan Patz Case

By COLLEEN LONG and LARRY NEUMEISTER 05/25/12 AP

NEW YORK — Thirty-three years to the day after 6-year-old Etan Patz vanished without a trace while walking to catch a school bus, a man accused of strangling him and dumping his body with the trash was arraigned on a murder charge on Friday in a locked hospital ward where he was being held as a suicide risk.

A lawyer for Pedro Hernandez, who was a teenage convenience store stock clerk at the time of the boy’s disappearance, told the judge that his client is mentally ill and has a history of hallucinations….

Hernandez, a churchgoing father now living in Maple Shade, N.J., was arrested Thursday after making a surprise confession in a case that has bedeviled investigators and inspired dread in generations of New York City parents for three decades.

Etan disappeared on May 25, 1979, on his two-block walk to his bus stop in Manhattan. It was the first time his parents had let him walk the route by himself.

Next to the bus stop was a convenience store, where Hernandez, then 18, worked as a clerk. When police, acting on a tip, interviewed him this week, he said he lured Etan into the basement with a promise of a soda, choked him to death, then stuffed his body in a bag and left it with trash on the street a block away, police said….

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Hernandez gave a detailed confession that led police to believe they had the right man. He also said Hernandez told a relative and others as far back as 1981 that he had “done something bad” and killed a child in New York.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/25/pedro-hernandez-charged-etan-patz_n_1546858.html

Philadelphia Priest Trial: Monsignor William Lynn Takes Stand In Own Defense
By MARYCLAIRE DALE 05/24/12

PHILADELPHIA — A Roman Catholic church official testified Thursday that he typed a list of suspected pedophile priests on his computer, but couldn’t find it 10 years later to show a grand jury.

Monsignor William Lynn endured a second day of searing cross-examination as he fights charges he endangered children by protecting priests. He’s due back on the stand Tuesday.

Lynn denies locking the 1994 list in an archdiocese safe, where church employees say it was found in 2006 and then buried in a lawyer’s files until this year.

The list was turned over to city prosecutors in February, days after Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua died. They’ve made it something of a smoking gun since the trial started in March.

Prosecutors believe it shows the Philadelphia archdiocese knew it had diagnosed pedophiles and other predators on duty, but left them in jobs with access to children….

Lynn is charged with endangering two children by leaving the Rev. James Brennan, a co-defendant charged with attempted rape, and former priest Edward Avery, who pleaded guilty to sexual assault, in ministry despite earlier red flags….

On Bevilacqua’s orders, Molloy shredded Lynn’s list of predators in February 1994, an act witnessed by Cistone, according to the “shred memo,” which was shown in court….

the case of a priest accused of having sex with a 17-year-old girl in Venezuela years earlier. “The cardinal did not consider that pedophilia, because it was a different culture and a different atmosphere,” Lynn recalled. The priest remained in ministry until March, when he was removed from the South Philadelphia parish he led.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/24/philadelphia-priest-trial-parishioners-told-accused-priests-had-health-problems-monsignor-william-lynn-testifies_n_1542218.html