The reviews are in and they do not look good for Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams. Williams is under investigation because he failed to declare $160,000 in gifts and freebies. A number of murder cases presided over by Williams’ office have also been found to be faulty. Daily News columnist Will Bunch has called for the DA’s resignation while old-time columnists like Stu Bykofsky have hinted that Williams may be on his way out.
Then there’s the case of Msgr. William Lynn.
William’s office charged Lynn in 2011 with hiding or not doing enough to apprehend abusive priests under his charge despite the fact that William’s predecessor, the ‘no-nonsense’ Lynne Abraham believed that the law that Williams was applying to Msgr. Lynn was not valid. Msgr. Lynn, after all, never had any direct contact with children, but Williams got it into his head that Lynn was a “supervisor of children” and that he “endangered the welfare of children.” That’s guilt by fifty degrees of separation. Msgr. was the first member of the Catholic hierarchy to be found guilty in a court of law for ‘endangering’ children.”
Newsweek did a cover story this year on the Seth Williams/Msgr. Lynn fiasco. Entitled “Catholic Guilt? The Lying Scheming Altar Boy Behind a Lurid Rape Case,” the story eviscerated the claims of former altar boy Daniel Gallagher. Those accusations put three priests and one lay teacher in prison. Msgr. Lynn was one of those three priests.
Williams’ orchestrated witch hunt resulted in Lynn’s conviction in 2012. That conviction was overturned by a ruling from a lower state court that declared that Lynn was “wrongly convicted.” Still, the Williams factory wouldn’t give up and soon Lynn found himself back in court. This time, he found himself facing Judge Teresa Sarmina, who presided at his original trial before the lower state court ruling. Sarmina ordered Lynn back to prison. Even Lynn’s family refused to attend Sarmina’s hearing because they saw this decision coming.
Lynn’s family said in a statement: “We, the family of Msgr. Lynn, chose to forgo the proceedings… We could also not bear the erroneous ramblings of the prosecutor once more… Msgr. is secure in the love and support from family and so many others so our physical presence was unnecessary.”
Will the DA not be happy until Msgr. Lynn dies in prison the same way that the Reverend Charles Engelhardt, 67, a Philadelphia priest serving the second of his 12-year sentence because of Gallagher’s 2009 accusations, did?
The story of Father Engelhardt is a sad one. Like Lynn, he had the full support of his family. The Engelhardt family was quite adamant that an innocent man had been persecuted.
While there have been many real instances of clergy sex abuse scandals and rightful convictions, Fr. Engelhardt’s case is cloudy at best. The unwavering finger pointers who believe any accusation of molestation just because the accused wears a Roman collar, always put raw emotion above truth.
“Arrest all priests,” “Give every priest the chair,” “The Catholic Church needs to be destroyed,” are just some of the common sentiments expressed in the comments section at Philly.com.
At the time of Fr. Engelhardt’s death, the Pennsylvania Superior Court was hearing arguments in favor of a new trial for him based on charges that the original trial was riddled with “prosecutorial misconduct.”
According to Ralph Cipriano in an article entitled “When Prosecutors Cheat,” Fr. Engelhardt’s original trial was filled with so many errors, misrepresentations and lies that the entire dog and pony show had to be redone. When presiding Judge Anne E. Lazarus agreed to hear arguments for a new trial, new information surfaced that had been kept secret or off the record during the first trial.
Let’s look at Daniel Gallagher, the former altar boy turned drug user, who accused Fr. Engelhardt.
Gallagher was named as “Billy Doe” in the initial hearings. He claimed that he was molested or raped by his sixth-grade homeroom teacher. Because of this alleged abuse he became sick and missed a lot of school. Prosecutors at the trial stated that he missed 3 ½ days of school, but, as Cipriano points out, Doe’s report card shows perfect attendance.
According to Cipriano, when “Doe” first launched his civil suit against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, he was on record as telling his drug counselors that he did not have a history of sexual or physical abuse. He then reversed this earlier statement and produced a litany of accusations.
This is what “Billy Doe” claims happened to him:
1) He was abused at six years old by a friend
2) He was abused at seven years old by a teacher
3) He was abused at eight years old by an unknown man
4) He was abused at nine years old by another unknown man
5) He was abused again at nine years old by a 14-year-old family friend
The story doesn’t end there, it only keeps growing.
Gallagher told Seth Williams that he was molested or raped at 10 years of age by Fr. Engelhardt and another priest, Fr. Edward V. Avery. He claimed this despite reports that the two priests never hung out together.
Cipriano reports that Gallagher claimed on the witness stand when he testified that Fr. Engelhardt carried a black bag filled with pornographic magazines. Gallagher also claimed that Fr. Engelhardt told him just before he molested him that he was now ready “to become a man.” The alleged victim dropped another molester name into the hat, his homeroom teacher, Mr. Shero, who he says began abusing him when he turned 11.
And then Gallagher was interviewed by Judy Cruz-Ransom, an Archdiocesan Victims Unit social worker. Cipriano reports that Cruz-Ransom recalls Gallagher as “faking tears” and then telling her a long story about how he was raped for hours; how he was punched and knocked unconscious and even tied up with sacred altar sashes, and then strangled with a seat belt.
Gallagher didn’t say where the seat belt was from… a Nissan? Volvo? — but he conveniently forgot to mention getting strangled and all his other violent claims when he gave an official report to the police. Why were these claims just coming up now?
In describing yet another prosecutorial blunder, Cipriano asks us to take a look at prosecution witness Leo Omar Hernandez, who stated at the trial that he was Billy’s “best guy friend” when they were both sophomores at a Christian high school. The prosecution presented Hernandez as a model witness, an angelic guy who walked the straight and narrow. Hernandez’s honorable discharge from the U.S. Air Force and his life as a hardworking family man was also played to the hilt.
When Hernandez took the stand, he did admit that Gallagher had told him that at age 16 he was abused by a teacher and two priests.
While the jury heard that Hernandez dropped Gallagher as a friend because he was getting too involved in drugs, they did not hear that he worked part-time in all-male exotic dance clubs in Philly and that he had filed a civil case against his doctor whom he says abused him sexually and got him hooked on opiates. The jury did not hear that he once overdosed in Las Vegas and that he had been in a relationship with his doctor who periodically injected him with synthetic heroin and other drugs.
But Hernandez’s secret testimony was never released to the jury, so this added up to another prosecutorial mistake.
Seth Williams, who was against a new trial for Fr. Engelhardt, was unhappy and angry when the process for a new trial began. I think he figured he needed a sacrificial lamb to assuage public outrage over the number of real abuse cases popping up all over the city.
“Gallagher was a drug addict who’d been in and out of 28 different hospitals, clinics and drug rehabs, and had been arrested six times, including one bust for possession with intent to distribute 56 bags of heroin.” Capriano wrote in a post on his Big Trial blog titled “The [Real] Corruption of Seth Williams.”
Although Fr. Engelhardt is dead, his reputation and vindication rests with the accuser who started it all. But for now, as Cipriano has reported, Gallagher is living in Florida with his new wife, who’s expecting the couple’s first child. •
