Church Lawyer Testifies Everyone Lied to Him About Secret List of Priest Abuse Suspects

Posted May 15, 2012 9:16 AM CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

The former chief counsel for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia testified on Monday that church officials lied to him about a secret list of 35 priests suspected of abusing children.

The list is at issue in the trial of Msgr. William Lynn, accused of allowing priests suspected of abuse to continue in their ministries, report the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Associated Press, the Allentown Morning Call and CNN. Lawyer Timothy Coyne was suspended from his job as chief counsel a few weeks after the list surfaced.

"Everyone I spoke to said they didn't know where it was, and they didn't have a copy of it," Coyne testified. "Somebody lied to me—or a lot of people lied to me."

A memo discovered in 2006 asserted that Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua had ordered the shredding of the list shortly after it was drafted in 1994. According to Coyne, no one told him about the shredding order.
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550 sexual abuse claims filed against Milwaukee Archdiocese

Sex abuse claims too much

By CARRIE ANTLFINGER

updated 2/2/2012 9:53:48 AM ET

MILWAUKEE — About 550 people are asking for restitution for alleged sexual abuse by clergy in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee — more than in any of the other U.S. dioceses that have filed for bankruptcy protection, according to a lawyer involved in the Milwaukee case.


The archdiocese has paid more than $30 million in settlements and other court costs related to allegations of clergy abuse and more than a dozen suits against it have been halted because of the bankruptcy proceedings. One priest alone is accused of abusing some 200 boys at a suburban school for deaf students from 1950 to 1974.

James Stang, a bankruptcy lawyer who represents creditors in the Wisconsin case, estimated that about 550 claims had been filed by the Wednesday afternoon deadline set by the bankruptcy court.
Those who filed claims will end up splitting a settlement amount that will be determined by the creditors' committee, archdiocese and its insurance company. The archdiocese had only $4.6 million in assets to be applied to claims in 2010.

A victims' advocacy group called the number of filings "extraordinarily tragic," but said that represented only a small portion of people abused by clergy. READ MORE