Commonwealth v. Lynn

• Citation: 114 A.3d 796
• Decision Date: 27 April 2015
• Docket Number: No. 15 EAP 2014,15 EAP 2014
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant v. William LYNN, Appellee.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

114 A.3d 796

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant

v.William LYNN, Appellee.

No. 15 EAP 2014

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued Nov. 18, 2014.

Decided April 27, 2015.

Ronald Eisenberg, Esq., Edward F. McCann Jr., Esq., Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, Hugh J. Burns, Jr., Esq., R. Seth Williams, Esq., for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Thomas A. Bergstrom, Esq., Allison Khaskelis, Esq., H. Marc Tepper, Esq., Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, P.C., Philadelphia, for William Lynn.

CASTILLE, C.J., SAYLOR, EAKIN, BAER, TODD, STEVENS, JJ.

OPINION

Justice BAER.

Following a jury trial on charges that he endangered the welfare of children,¹ William Lynn (Appellee) was convicted and sentenced to a term of three to six years of incarceration. On appeal from his judgment of sentence, he challenged the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain his conviction, contending that he had no direct supervision of the children he was found to have endangered. The Superior Court agreed, and reversed his conviction. On the Commonwealth's appeal, we reverse the Superior Court, concluding that there is no statutory requirement of direct supervision of children. Rather, that which is supervised is the child's welfare. Under the facts presented at trial, Appellee was a person supervising the welfare of many children because, as a high-ranking official in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, he was specifically responsible for protecting children from sexually abusive priests.

Following eight years of education at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, Appellee graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy, and went on to earn two Master's degrees, in Divinity and Education Administration. Appellee was ordained as a priest in the Catholic Church on May 15, 1976. He served as a parish priest for eight years before becoming the Dean of Men at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in 1984. In January 1991, Appellee was appointed Associate Vicar in the Office of the Vicar for Administration in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. As Associate Vicar, one of Appellee's responsibilities was to assist Monsignor James Molloy by taking notes when they met with people regarding the sexual abuse of a minor by a member of the clergy, and, consequently, Appellee learned how to interview sexual abuse victims and record their allegations against a priest. N.T. 5/23/2012 at 183–85. In June 1992, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua appointed Appellee Secretary for Clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, where he served for twelve years, until June 2004.

As Secretary for Clergy, Appellee was responsible for ensuring that parishes were filled with enough priests, resolving disputes among priests, and handling clergy sexual abuse issues.² N.T. 5/23/2012 at 74–75. Building upon the experience he acquired assisting Monsignor Molloy, Appellee learned how to handle the victims of clergy sex abuse and the priests who sexually abused minors, becoming the “point man” in the investigation into such allegations of clergy sexual abuse of minors within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. N.T. 5/7/2012 at 246; 5/23/2012 at 173–202, 219–20. In this regard, it was his role to collect and assess information concerning allegations of sexual abuse against priests in the Archdiocese, discuss the allegations with the accused priests, participate in deciding how to address the allegations, and make recommendations to the Cardinal about the priests against whom allegations were made.

Indeed, by his own account, Appellee was the sole “funnel” of information concerning instances of clergy sex abuse, and it was his office alone that was responsible for not only receiving the allegations and exploring them, but also for passing vital information about abusive priests and their young victims up the chain of command in the Archdiocese. N.T. 5/23/2012 at 201, 220. Although he could only independently remove a priest from a parish if that priest admitted that he had abused someone, N.T. 5/23/2012 at 77, it was Appellee's responsibility to make recommendations about assignments to the Cardinal, who had the ultimate decision making authority. For example, Appellee could make recommendations to place a priest on administrative leave or restrict a priest's ministry by, for instance, prohibiting contact with the public or with children. In this respect, Appellee characterized protecting children as the most important part of his job, and explained that he worked “for” the children of the Archdiocese. N.T. 5/24/2012 at 56.

Upon learning of an abusive priest, Appellee considered his first priority to be the welfare of the victim. N.T. 5/24/2012 at 115 (“I mean, of course, I always understood that the child victim would come first.”); 5/23/2012 at 190–91 (when the prosecutor asked Appellee if there was “any job more important than protecting one of the innocent kids who was being sexually abused,” Appellee answered in the negative). According to Appellee, the purpose of his investigations was, at least in part, to determine whether the offending priest “should be removed from ministry and taken out of the—and children could be taken out of his way.” N.T. 5/16/2012 at 98.

When Appellee first assumed the office of Secretary for Clergy in June 1992, he collected information about “problem priests” on a “need-be basis,” whenever he received complaints about them. N.T. 5/7/2012 at 261. In addition, his position authorized him to be one of the few officials within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia with access to the “Secret Archives.” The Secret Archives were located on the 12th floor of the Office of Clergy and maintained under lock and key; they contained information about “any kind of major infractions a priest would have,” and which only a “very, very limited number of people within the Archdiocese had access to or a key to.” N.T. 3/26/2012 at 213–14. The Secret Archives were largely in Appellee's control as Secretary for Clergy, and he routinely consulted them to determine if there was already information contained therein relevant to a priest about whom he had received complaints.

In early 1994, after receiving information about a particular priest, Rev. Dux, who was then in active ministry, Appellee consulted the Secret Archives and discovered documentation that this particular priest had engaged in serious sexual misconduct in the past. This discovery caused Appellee to become concerned that there were other priests in active service against whom allegations of abuse had been asserted, and accordingly prompted him to conduct a comprehensive review of the Secret Archives to check for incidents of child sexual abuse among all priests in active ministry within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

This review encompassed 323 priests and resulted in a report created by Appellee on February 18, 1994, entitled “Report from the Secretariat for Clergy” (referred hereafter as “February 18, 1994 Report”). This report identified 35 priests in active service with previous complaints of sexual abuse of minors. Appellee placed each of these 35 priests on one of three lists: three priests were identified as “pedophiles;” 12 priests as “Guilty of Sexual Misconduct with Minors;” and 20 were included on a list entitled “Allegations of Sexual Misconduct with Minors with No Conclusive Evidence.” N.T. 5/16/2012 at 182–98. Regarding the 12 priests that Appellee determined were guilty of sexual misconduct with minors, he considered it his job “to do something about [them].” N.T. 5/16/2012 at 47.

Reverend Edward V. Avery was the first name on Appellee's list of priests whom he considered to be guilty of sexual misconduct with minors.³ Appellee was personally familiar with Rev. Avery, who had come to Appellee's attention about a year and a half earlier when he first became Secretary for Clergy, before he performed the comprehensive review of the Secret Archives. Appellee had investigated allegations into Rev. Avery's conduct, and memorialized his understanding of these allegations with notations to Rev. Avery's Secret Archives file indicating “alcoholism and action with same minor three times,” and “action occurred more than five years ago.” As will be discussed more fully below, the information contained in Rev. Avery's Secret Archives file revealed that he had built a trusting relationship with this minor, R.F., in his church, groomed R.F. with attention outside of the religious context, and, on several occasions, supplied R.F. with alcohol and engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct.

Specifically, Rev. Avery's Secret Archives file contained a letter written by R.F. on March 31, 1992, to Appellee's predecessor as Secretary for Clergy, Monsignor Jagodzinski, regarding his sexual abuse by Rev. Avery in the 1970s when R.F. was an adolescent. R.F. indicated that he wrote the letter out of concern for “other adolescent boys” who may also have been abused by Rev. Avery. N.T. 4/25/2012 at 38. R.F. attached a copy of a letter he had previously written to Rev. Avery in which he recounted the bond that had been formed between them when R.F. was around 11 years old, in the sixth grade, and Rev. Avery was the assistant pastor at St. Philip Neri Parish in East Greenville, and how Rev. Avery's sexual groping of him on multiple occasions had wreaked emotional havoc upon him at a young age.⁴ Allegedly because Monsignor Jagodzinski was in the process of ending his term, he had not responded to R.F.'s March 31, 1992 letter.

Once Appellee assumed the position of Secretary for Clergy, he reviewed R.F.'s letter, and, on September 28, 1992, met with him to discuss the allegations contained therein. R.F. provided further details regarding how Rev. Avery had victimized him at a young age. Specifically, when R.F. was an altar boy he helped Rev. Avery serve Mass at St. Philip Neri. He described Rev. Avery as very charismatic, popular with young people, and active with the youth in the parish. Outside of church, Rev. Avery gave R.F. his first beer at age 12,...