http://articles.philly.com/2012-06-25/news/32409746_1_isa-logan-abuse-victims-jury-foreman

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Thank you, George Bouchey, for this link.

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I have emphasized a quote from the jury foreman using a bold red font [FJD].

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Jury foreman sad to hear from priests’ abuse victims

June 25, 2012|BY MENSAH M. DEAN, Daily News Staff Writer

ISA LOGAN, the jury foreman in the predator-priests child-abuse trial, is a father of three, a husband and a deacon at his West Philadelphia church.

After hearing nearly 11 weeks of testimony and spending 13 days deliberating the fates of the defendants – Monsignor Williams Lynn, 61, and suspended priest James Brennan, 48 – Logan, a mountain-of-a-man at 6 feet 6, reflected on the experience in the shadow of the Criminal Justice Center.

“Because I’m a man and a father, the most shocking point was to hear the actual victims. For them to have to actually relive the entire moment or things that happened to them was sad to me,” said Logan, who once played basketball at Germantown High School and works in customer service at a Center City bank.

Logan led a jury that convicted Lynn of one count of child endangerment and acquitted him of a second count of child endangerment and conspiracy. The jury deadlocked on both counts against Brennan: attempted rape and child endangerment.

Referring to Lynn’s defense that he was just following orders from former Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, Logan, an Army veteran, said he’d have taken a court-martial rather than follow unjust orders.

“I’m a human being before I’m a soldier,” he said.

Logan, the only juror to face the cameras, said his heart goes out to the victims. To those disappointed with the mixed verdict, he said, it was based on the law as understood by the jurors.

“It’s easy when you’re on the outside looking in, and all you can hear is what the media has,” he said. “But when you’re on the inside . . . it’s a little different.”

District Attorney Seth Williams praised the conviction of Lynn, the first Catholic Church official to be convicted of enabling another priest to sexually abuse children, and said he had not yet decided whether to retry Brennan.

“This day was a long time coming,” Williams said. “It is an important day for all institutional-abuse victims. It is no easy thing to overcome decades of coverup and a culture of silence. This verdict will help put an end to the blind eye and the deaf ear with which so many victims of abuse have received.”

Logan said he’s glad to leave the trial behind.

“I can honestly say that I never knew this building existed,”he said. “So now I’m going to make it erase again and go back to my normal life.”

Contact Mensah M. Dean at 215-568-8278 or deanm@phillynews.com.

http://www.snapnetwork.org/pa_snap_s_letter_to_archbishop_chaput

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June 27, 2012

Dear Archbishop Chaput;

We are leaders of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Our mission is to protect the vulnerable and heal the wounded.

We are writing you today with a simple and straightforward request about Monsignor William Lynn. He has been tried. He has been convicted. He should be defrocked.

This is not about being vindictive. It’s about being prudent. It’s about trying to reverse decades or centuries of self-serving secrecy in child sex abuse cases by thousands of Catholic officials. It’s about sending the most clear and severe message possible to current and future church employees who ignore, conceal and enable heinous crimes against kids. That message should be a “no brainer” – if you protect predators and hurt kids by hiding known and suspected crimes, you will be out of a job.

Sadly, even now, that message is virtually never sent. With only a handful of exceptions, Catholic staffers who act recklessly, callously and deceitfully with the safety of kids are virtually never disciplined by officials like you. So sadly, the same hurtful patterns of complicity – that have been so thoroughly exposed, so extensively documented and so widely criticized – continue.

This is simple common sense, Archbishop. If you do what virtually every US bishop has done – keep on staff virtually every cleric who put innocent kids second and the church’s reputation first – how can you possibly expect that the well-being of kids will ever take priority over the well-being of predators?

You can question why Msgr. Lynn did what he did and to what extend he’s really to blame. But no reasonable person can deny that, for more than a decade, Msgr. Lynn ignored, concealed and enabled child sex crimes, refusing, in dozens of cases, to call police even once about known or suspected child sex crimes. No reasonable person can deny that children suffered as a result of his actions and inactions.

No reasonable person can deny that he had many options but repeatedly chose the irresponsible one: never questioning or undermining or defying – even once – a deceitful or harmful decision by his supervisors or peers or underlings. And no one can deny that he is a felon.

Please help bring healing to your archdiocese. Please help prevent future horrors. Please stop doing what Msgr. Lynn and others did – protecting wrongdoers. Please start defrocking Msgr. Lynn today.

David Clohessy
SNAP Director
314.566.9790
SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Barbara Dorris
SNAP Outreach Director
314.862.7688, 314.503.0003
SNAPdorris@gmail.com