Bishop Bennison Testifies on Trial's Third Day

June 12, 2008

The lawyer for the Rt. Rev. Charles E. Bennison Jr. did not ask to treat two witnesses as hostile in the Court for the Trial of a Bishop on Wednesday, but neither witness proved eager to build a case that the Bishop of Pennsylvania is not guilty of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy.

Bishop Bennison stands accused on two ecclesiastical charges: One is that he “reacted passively and self-protectively after he learned of his brother’s sexual misconduct with a young girl,” according to charges alleged in the presentment document; the other charge is that for more than 30 years he “deliberately and systematically” did not disclose what he knew about his brother’s misconduct in order “to contain the possibility of scandal.”

Bishop Bennison’s lawyer, James Pabarue, called the Rt. Rev. Harold Hopkins, former director of the Presiding Bishop’s Office of Pastoral Development, in an effort to establish how much several other bishops knew about the sexual misconduct scandal. He also called on Mr. Bennison’s ex-wife, Maggie Thompson, in an effort to establish that she was an important link in an information chain leading both to Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and to the Rt. Rev. Clay Matthews, the current director of the Office of Pastoral Development. the rest

Update: Episcopal Bishop Verdict Due In July