PHILADELPHIA - Video footage played Monday at the opening of a trial stemming from a boat crash that killed two Hungarian tourists shows the teenage girl killed in the collision tossing a deckhand her life jacket moments before the doomed vessel is driven under by an unmanned barge.
Attorney Robert Mongeluzzi told a packed Philadelphia federal courtroom that 16-year-old Dora Schwendtner’s final moments were spent selflessly trying to aid deckhand Kyle Burkhardt, who dove overboard seconds before the amphibious duck boat was run over by an unmanned barge being guided up the Delaware River by a tugboat.
“Dora throws her life preserver to Kyle Burkhardt to save his life . . . and she loses her own,’’ Mongeluzzi told the court.
The families allege unclear safety policies and ineffective training and procedures caused the crash.
Attorneys for K-Sea Transportation and Ride the Ducks each blamed the other company - and tug pilot Matthew Devlin, who was sentenced in November to a year in prison after pleading guilty to the maritime equivalent of involuntary manslaughter.
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Related: Friends Don't Let Friends....
Boston Globe Boat Rolling on the River
Tugging Along in the Boston Globe
"$17M settlement in deadly Philly duck boat crash" Associated Press, May 10, 2012
PHILADELPHIA - A $17 million settlement was reached Wednesday in the wrongful-death case of two Hungarian students killed in a tour boat collision with a barge on the Delaware River.
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One thing I'm not ducking:
"Ex-altar boy testifies in priest abuse case" Associated Press, April 26, 2012
PHILADELPHIA - A young man told a jury in a criminal clergy abuse case Wednesday that he was sexually assaulted as an altar boy by two Philadelphia priests and that he soon turned to drugs for relief.
The witness, a police officer’s son, said he started smoking marijuana the summer he turned 11 to deal with the abuse, and has since tried drug treatment 23 times to battle addictions to heroin, painkillers, and other drugs.
The 23-year-old testified at the trial of Monsignor William Lynn, a
former secretary for clergy at the Philadelphia Archdiocese who is
charged with child endangerment for helping to keep accused priests in
ministry.
Jurors were not told that Avery, Lynn’s former codefendant, has pleaded guilty to the crime. And defense lawyers chose not to cross-examine the accuser, despite vigorous pretrial attacks on his allegations. The judge had said she might allow Avery’s plea to be disclosed if they challenged the man’s credibility.
Nor did the jury hear the witness say he had also been raped by his fifth-grade teacher from the parish school, as he alleged in his 2010 grand jury testimony.
One juror fought back tears as the witness described closed-door “sessions’’ with Avery.
The young man - who has brooding eyes, a buzz cut, and closely-cropped facial hair - came to court in a dark suit and tie. Prosecutors earlier showed school photographs of him as a sunny, slightly-built boy in a parochial school uniform and as an altar boy, sporting a floor-length white cassock and gold cross.
The witness said Avery put on church music and made him do a striptease in a small anteroom inside St. Jerome’s Church in northeast Philadelphia in 1999, then engaged in mutual oral sex and masturbation.
He said he never told anyone until group therapy at a drug treatment program years later.
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"Pennsylvania witness lashes out at Catholic Church" by Maryclaire Dale | Associated Press, May 01, 2012
PHILADELPHIA - A man unleashed his fury Monday at the Roman Catholic Church, staring down a church official in a Philadelphia courtroom as he described being forced as a child to engage in sex acts with a priest.
The 47-year-old man glared Monday at Monsignor William Lynn at the defense table and complained that only one church representative, a priest friend, had ever apologized.
“It always felt wrong. A man should not touch a child,’’ said the man, the ninth of 10 children in his Levittown family.
Testifying in the sixth week of a clergy abuse trial focusing on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the man broke down when he recalled telling his mother in 1998 about being abused by former priest David Sicoli in the late 1970s.
Sicoli molested him at the priest’s shore home in Sea Isle, N.J., in the priest’s red-and-white sports car, and on other occasions, the man testified. Like other accusers who have testified, he worked at the rectory, and his mother had hopes of him becoming a priest.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually abused.
A 2005 grand jury report alleged that Sicoli abused at least a dozen boys and said the archdiocese had suspicions before he was sent to Levittown. A phone number for Sicoli in Sea Isle could not be found.
Lynn, 61, is charged with endangering children by keeping accused priests in ministry after reviewing abuse complaints kept in secret archives when he served as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004. His lawyers argue that he took orders from the cardinal.
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"Pa. diocese removes 5 priests tied to abuse; Church review clears 3 others" by Maryclaire Dale | Associated Press, May 05, 2012
PHILADELPHIA - Five priests will be permanently barred from ministry after the Philadelphia archdiocese substantiated allegations of sexual abuse or inappropriate conduct, a Roman Catholic archbishop said Friday.
Three other suspended priests will return to ministry, and another died during the investigation, Archbishop Charles Chaput said. Another 17 cases remain under review, he said.
“When a child is harmed, the church has failed. When trust is lost,
the church has failed. When the whole community suffers as a result, the
church has failed,’’ Chaput said. “We can’t change the past. But I pray
- and I do believe - that the lessons of the last year have made our
church humbler, wiser, and a more vigilant guardian of our people’s
safety.’’
“How do they define boundary issues, if somebody reports, credibly, that he was sexually raped - both orally and anally - as a 9-to-11-year-old?’’ said the man’s lawyer, Daniel Monahan of Exton.
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"Nun testifies of inaction on sex abuse" Associated Press, May 11, 2012
PHILADELPHIA - A Roman Catholic nun testified Thursday that she and two relatives were sexually abused by a priest who was described by a church leader as “one of the sickest people I ever knew.’’
The nun testified in the clergy-abuse trial of Monsignor William Lynn, the first US church official charged with felony child endangerment for allegedly leaving predator-priests in ministry.
The nun said she, her sister, and her cousin went to the archdiocese
in 1991 to report 1970s-era abuse by the Rev. Nicholas Cudemo and to ask
that he be removed as a pastor. They met with Monsignors James Molloy
and Lynn, who worked in the Office for Clergy.
Cudemo was put on leave and sent for a psychiatric evaluation. But the family soon learned he was saying Mass at other parishes....
Cudemo was allowed to retire in 1996 in good standing.
The grand jury accused him of sexually molesting 11 girls. He violated one girl with a Communion wafer, let another priest have sex with her, and took her for an abortion when he got her pregnant in junior high school, the grand jury said....
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Also see: Monday Morning Mass: Philly Priest Trial
