It's jury's turn now in sex-abuse trial

BY MENSAH M. DEAN, Daily News Staff Writer deanm@phillynews.com, 215-568-8278
Posted: January 28, 2013

JURY DELIBERATIONS began Friday afternoon in the trial of a Catholic priest and a former Catholic-schoolteacher who are accused of sexually assaulting the same altar boy in the late 1990s.

The Common Pleas jury got the case after hearing closing arguments from Assistant District Attorney Mark Cipolletti and defense attorney Michael J. McGovern, who represents the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, 66.

Defense attorney Burton Rose, who represents Bernard Shero, 50, gave his closing argument Thursday.

Cipolletti said there was no doubt about the defendants' guilt and asked the jury to give their accuser justice by convicting them.

The accuser, now 24, testified that beginning at age 10, when he was an altar boy at St. Jerome's Church in the Northeast, he was sexually assaulted by the two defendants and by defrocked priest Edward Avery, 70, who pleaded guilty last year and is serving 2 1/2 to 5 years in state prison.

The accuser wiped tears from his eyes at times during Friday's closing arguments.

The defense attorneys told the jury that the young man, who has suffered from drug addiction and has sued the church, could not be believed and that their innocent clients never assaulted him.

The jurors deliberated for about three hours before Judge Ellen Ceisler sent them home. The panel will resume work on Monday.

 

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