‘Smiling Padre’: His Path to Court
Case May be a Guide in Phila. Prosecution...
By John P. Martin
Phila Inquirer Staff Writer...3/14/11
“In 1995, a few hundred people packed a Northeast Philadelphia banquet hall to mark a milestone for the Rev. Edward Avery: a quarter-century in the priesthood.
Few knew the underside of Avery’s record. Two years earlier, he had been plucked from his parish & secretly sent to an inpatient program for sexually abusive priests.
In a letter in September 1992, a 29-year-old medical student accused Avery of having molested him when he was an altar boy at St. Philip Neri in Pennsburg in the late 1970s.
Upon his release, doctors urged officials of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to keep Avery away from adolescents and ‘vulnerable minority populations.’
Avery became a hospital chaplain, but church leaders let him live at St. Jerome’s, a Northeast parish with a school.
Twice in 1999 - four years after his anniversary dinner - Avery forced a fifth-grade altar boy there to perform oral sex on him in the sacristy after Mass, prosecutors say.
Now 68 and defrocked, Avery is one of four current or former priests due in court Monday for the first time since their arrests last month on abuse or related charges.”
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20110313__Smiling_Padre___His_path_to_court.html
Rev. Edward Avery in 1980...
One of four current or former priests due in court Monday for the first time since their arrests last month on abuse or related charges.