'Serial Predator' Catholic Priest Arrested in Rape of Altar Boy in Philadelphia: VIDEO
The Rev. Robert L. Brennan, a serial rapist priest, has finally been arrested, CBS Philadelphia reports:
Brennan also figured prominently in Philadelphia grand jury reports in 2005 and 2011. In last year's trial of a church official for covering up clergy sex abuse, witnesses detailed allegations that Brennan sexually abused about 20 boys while being transferred from parish to parish over a span of 15 years.
Brennan, however, was never charged because the allegations happened too far back to be prosecuted.
Until Thursday, when District Attorney Seth Williams announced the arrest of Brennan, 75, for allegedly raping an altar boy between 1998 and 2001, while he was assistant pastor at Resurrection of Our Lord parish in Rhawnhurst.
The arrest came after the victim, now 26, came forward.
Watch (autoplay), AFTER THE JUMP...
The Catholic Church needs to spend its time taking care of what happens on in its own house and NOT what goes on in mine.
Posted by: HadenoughBS | Sep 27, 2013 8:52:18 AM
All Christians are pedophiles and are evil. It's not surprising.
Posted by: Hyde | Sep 27, 2013 9:10:41 AM
I hope the justice system ensures he is never able to harm anyone ever again.
@Hadenoughbs, I agree, clean the church first and don't try to put the attention to sth else.
@Hyde, not all Christians.
Posted by: Matt27 | Sep 27, 2013 9:21:01 AM
To be fair to the Catholic Church:
1. This never happened.
2. The so-called "victims" are making this up
3. The "victims" and their attorneys see a payday in their future
4. The Catholic Church is being unfairly attacked
5. What about the abuse cases in public schools, etc?
Posted by: jtramon | Sep 27, 2013 9:33:40 AM
@Jtramon - to be fair: this stuff happens all the time, everywhere, and you are a troll.
Posted by: Jack M | Sep 27, 2013 9:35:35 AM
Wow. He's so vile that the church didn't spirit him away two steps ahead of the police. That's got to sting.
Posted by: Gregory In Seattle | Sep 27, 2013 9:38:04 AM
This is the third child rapist priest arrested in the U.S. in the last 2 weeks!!
Posted by: Rob | Sep 27, 2013 9:40:20 AM
^^^Obviously my comments were being sarcastic.
It seems each time another of these stories come out, the "church defenders" start up with these responses.
My favorite of course, is that "public schools have more cases than the catholic church".
DUH. The cases in the catholic church, and the number of its victims, are multiplied many times over simply because the church keeps moving the abusers to other parishes, thereby giving them more victims whose lives they can ruin.
Such as this case-where the number of victims is around twenty. In a business or public school or sector - if you are raping children, you're thown in jail, not moved to the next town.
Posted by: jtramon | Sep 27, 2013 9:43:23 AM
The Caholic Crime Cartel is a shake-down racket run by criminals whose frontline foot soldiers alse rape your kids. Taking a child to a Catholic "church" or school is child abuse.
Grow up and stop believing in fairy tales told to you by men in dresses -- unless you're at a good drag show in a nice cabaret, in which case carry on. But leave the kids at home, please.
Posted by: oncemorewithfeeling | Sep 27, 2013 10:05:16 AM
@JTRAMON - How your comment could have been misconstrued as anything other than what is was - sarcasm - is beyond me. Moving on...
when will this stop? How many more rapist priests are being protected by the RCC? They know that they're rapists yet instead of turning them over to the police they move them to another parish, giving them a fresh crop of children to rape. Disgusting!
Posted by: Gigi | Sep 27, 2013 10:10:05 AM
the cardinal who knew about and protected this priest for years died last year, escaping justice. he was a civil lawyer and knew how to work the courts in his favor. cardinal bevilaqua. one of america's worst bishops. i find it disturbing that this is only happening after bevilaqua's death.
Posted by: woody | Sep 27, 2013 10:15:37 AM
@ JACK M You calling someone a Troll is like the pot calling the kettle black. Get over your old cranky self.
I agree with GIGI - and while the church may have come a long way, they've done it kicking and screaming. I still think they're hiding a lot more skeletons in their "closets"
Posted by: ungracefuldancer | Sep 27, 2013 10:20:00 AM
gigi, et al, perhaps if you had actually been a reader and seen the comments that are made on this news blog you would understand how regular readers without any web style indicators would mistake the comment of another relative unknown for the post of a troll.
i have two observations, with zero snark, i hope someone finds a way to go after bevilaqua, since he was in many ways more evil than the perpetrators on his watch, and two, any statutes of limitation should be removed from sexual abuse of minors charges.
Posted by: bandanajack | Sep 27, 2013 10:24:11 AM
How could a priest's salary afford Joan Rivers' plastic surgeon? That's what I wanna know, the Archdiocese needs to do an audit of his accounts too LOL
Posted by: clint | Sep 27, 2013 10:42:38 AM
An arrest should have been made for that hair, alone. Gah!
Posted by: Geoff | Sep 27, 2013 10:46:16 AM
As I recall, many years ago I did the math and Catholic priests are convicted of sex crimes at a rate no higher than the general population.
Fun fact to know and tell. American Indians molest children at a rate which is the highest of any American racial group. But you never hear about that, do you?
Posted by: Hagatha | Sep 27, 2013 11:00:27 AM
Wont somebody think of the children and stop these gay marriages so that straight couples can make more babies for the church to rape?!
Posted by: Jerry | Sep 27, 2013 11:01:27 AM
Wonder if he'll be excommunicated by the pope? Refusing to oppose abortion rights, advocating ordination of female priests, being openly gay and supporting marriage equality are grounds for defrocking and excommunication. Raping children, adultery, and lying to cover up those heinous crimes, not so much, if at all. You just have to love the Catholic church, one of the world's largest and most successful criminal enterprises.
Posted by: Bob R | Sep 27, 2013 11:57:09 AM
Yet another typical Catholic pedophile priest, hidden & protected by the world's largest organized child rape crime syndicate until he finally got caught.
Catholics protect their pedophile crimes with all of the power that satan has.
Philly Catholics spent $11 million last year to protect Msgr Lynn, who shredded evidence about 35 "Jerry Sandusky" priests like Brennan. Catholics never said how much they spent to save Brennan, who they know ADMITTED that he was in his apartment alive with a young child who was watching porn, and slept in a bed with the child.
In the Catholic freak fraternity of the priesthood, that's ok.
Catholics protect their child rapists like Jesus would protect children.
Posted by: bernard law | Sep 27, 2013 12:11:03 PM
You're missing the point, apologist @Hagatha. Power and gross institutional hypocrisy. No one is saying that only priests rape children, but the priests have had the Catholic hierarchy spending gazillions of dollars to cover up their crimes, while, meanwhile, the same Catholic hierarchy is trying to be a moral authority, meddling in our lives when they should be worrying about why their "celibate" priets are f**king their kids.
Posted by: Ernie | Sep 27, 2013 1:42:35 PM
Alleluiah!
Posted by: simon | Sep 27, 2013 2:19:52 PM
Actually Cardinal Dolan is an expert in moving things around and hiding them. That includes money and abusers. He may not have got the memo this time.
Posted by: simon | Sep 27, 2013 2:26:15 PM
Obviously, victims need to press charges sooner for these cases to be successful. Fortunately, there may be ways to initiate civil proceedings even after a long period of time.
Posted by: anon | Sep 27, 2013 2:29:56 PM
Ernie - Not piling on doesn't make me an apologist. Though I despise the RCC, I despise it honestly and for the right reason. Using the occasional statutory rapist too damn the church is dishonest. In fact, it's a tactic of the religious right.
Here's how the religious right does math:
Two men are convicted of sex with minors. Joe had sex with two 14 year old girls and Fred had sex with 20 14 year old boys. Now we do the RR math.
Fred had sex with ten times as many boys as Joe had girls, so gay people are ten times more likely to molest. But we're not done. Because gay people are 2% (the religious right always uses the lowest figure available from a seemingly respectable source) of the population, then you multiply the ten times factor by another factor of 50 and declare that gay people are 100 times more likely to RAPE CHILDREN (by now they want you to believe that we're talking about anal rape when any idiot knows that most of these diddlers are sexually immature adults who don't like doing the nasty) than heterosexuals.
So no, I'm not an apologist but I'm also not going to pile on to defective reasoning.
Posted by: Hagatha | Sep 27, 2013 3:18:45 PM
That is one creepy looking priest.
Posted by: jarago | Sep 27, 2013 5:26:11 PM