Accuser's past opened in priest's child sex-abuse trial

T HE JUDGE in the clergy-sex-abuse trial ruled yesterday that the jury can hear about the troubled past of one priest's accuser.

Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina said attorney Michael Wallace, who represents defrocked priest Edward Avery, can tell jurors about the man's expulsion from the Catholic high school he attended in the early 2000s, and of discrepancies in the man's related civil lawsuit and his grand-jury testimony.

Avery, 69, is charged with sexually assaulting the man when he was a 10-year-old altar boy in the 1990s. Wallace said the accuser is a drug addict who made up the allegation against Avery.

Avery and his two co-defendants, the Rev. James Brennan, 48, charged with raping a different boy in the 1990s; and Monsignor William Lynn, 61, charged with failing to stop the assaults, have pleaded not guilty.

- Mensah M. Dean