William Brennan

During three hours of emotional and sometimes contentious testimony, a former Bucks County altar boy Wednesday described how a priest in the landmark child-sex abuse and conspiracy trial molested him during an overnight visit when he was 14. The man, now 30, broke down several times recounting the alleged 1996 assault by the Rev. James J. Brennan that he said plunged him into a spiral of drugs and crime and still haunts him. He said Brennan,...

During three hours of emotional and sometimes contentious testimony, a former Bucks County altar boy Wednesday described how a priest in the landmark child-sex abuse and conspiracy trial molested him during an overnight visit when he was 14. The man, now 30, broke down several times recounting the alleged 1996 assault by the Rev. James J. Brennan that he said plunged him into a spiral of drugs and crime and still haunts him. He said Brennan,...

JAMES BRENNAN, the former Catholic priest accused of attempting to rape a 14-year-old boy, appeared downbeat but determined Monday to prove his innocence after learning that the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office plans to retry him. "I feel badly about it because, personally, I don't think it's necessary, but it's the commonwealth's decision to do what they do," Brennan, 49, said outside the Criminal Justice Center. "All I can do is respond to it. " Brennan said his greatest concern was for his family and his attorney, William Brennan, because, he said, "they shouldn't have to go through this again.

Two of the three Catholic priests who will go on trial next week in the clergy-child-abuse case are themselves being victimized by their troubled accusers, defense lawyers said today during a pretrial hearing. The two former altar boys who allege that they were raped in the 1990s by Rev. James Brennan, 48, and defrocked priest Edward Avery, 69, are longtime drug addicts with criminal records who have made false allegations hoping to improve their situations, lawyers for the two priests said.

The Superior Court of Pennsylvania on Tuesday reversed the attempted prostitution conviction of a woman who was famously tried for trying to trade sex for Phillies World Series tickets. A jury in March 2010 found Susan Finkelstein, 45, of West Philadelphia, guilty of the third-degree misdemeanor after clearing her of the more serious charge of prostitution, lodged against her after she placed a racy online ad seeking tickets to the Phillies-Yankees series in 2009. She was sentenced to one year of probation and 100 hours of community service.

It was one of the most graphic details in a grand jury report filled with uncomfortable passages: A sentence on Page 37 stating that after the Rev. James J. Brennan anally raped a 14-year-old, the priest remained inside his body as the boy cried himself to sleep. Yet in Monday's opening statements at the long-awaited clergy sex-abuse trial in Common Pleas Court, both the prosecution and a defense attorney offered a sharply sanitized version of that night, which casts doubt on the case against Brennan and could weaken the conspiracy charge against Msgr.

A JURY CONVICTED Monsignor William J. Lynn on Friday of child endangerment, finding that as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia secretary for clergy, he ignored credible warning signs about a priest who later sexually assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. The verdict, after a three-month trial, marked the first time since the clergy-sex-abuse scandal erupted a decade ago that a Catholic Church supervisor had been found criminally liable for child-sex...

DURING THREE hours of emotional and sometimes contentious testimony, a former Bucks County altar boy on Wednesday described how a priest in the landmark child-sex-abuse and conspiracy trial molested him during an overnight visit when he was 14. The man, now 30, broke down several times recounting a 1996 assault by the Rev. James J. Brennan that he said plunged him into a spiral of drugs and crime and still haunts him. He said Brennan, his...

APHILADELPHIA MAN who was the victim of a cruel airplane hoax was set up by his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend because the man had posted a "compromising picture" of his ex on Facebook, according to court documents. Federal authorities arrested Kenneth Smith Jr., 26, of Philadelphia, for calling police at the Philadelphia International Airport Thursday morning and reporting that passenger Christopher Shell would attempt to board a Texas-bound flight with liquid explosives, court documents said.