Catholic Church

Monsignor William Lynn, the first Catholic Church officially to be criminal convicted for the sexual abuse done to youth that he had responsibility for (but did not directly abuse), won his appeal, Zack Needles, my former colleague at The Legal Intelligencer, reports: "Lynn's lawyers had argued following his conviction that the trial judge had refused to address the defense argument that a pre-amended version of Pennsylvania's law criminalizing endangerment of the welfare of children did not apply in the case. President Judge John T. Bender, writing for the court, agreed, saying Lynn was not the direct supervisor of any of the alleged victims, but instead supervised the direct supervisors of the alleged victims. Therefore, he was not covered as a principal under the pre-amended EWOC statute, Bender said."

Monsignor William J. Lynn was the first Catholic Church official in the country to be convicted of a crime related to the sexual abuse of youth who were directly abused by other clergy, not Lynn. Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Joseph A. Slobodzian reported on the Pennsylvania appellate arguments challenging Lynn's conviction on the grounds that the crime Lynn was convicted of--endangering the welfare of child crime--could not apply to him because the statute was written to criminalize the failures in the direct supervision of kids. Defense lawyer Tom Bergstrom also argued that Lynn's conviction can't stand under the amended version of the endangering statute because he was no longer supervising children at the time the law was changed.