Monica Yant Kinney: New sex-abuse charges put institutional leaders on notice

Monica Yant Kinney, Inquirer Columnist Posted: Sunday, November 4, 2012, 4:01 AM After the mixed-message end to the criminal trial of the Rev. James J. Brennan and Msgr. William J. Lynn, I speculated that even one conviction would rock both the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the state legal system. Brennan had been accused of attempted rape and Lynn faced conspiracy charges, but after 13 days of deliberation, a conflicted jury declared a mistrial for Brennan and found Lynn - at the time the nation's highest-ranking church official ensnared in the sex-abuse scandal - guilty of just one crime: endangering the welfare of a child. Surely that single verdict, on that felonious charge, would...