Judge Ceisler Puts Away Engelhardt And Shero

Assistant District Attorney Evangelia Manos

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

Judge Ellen Ceisler today gave onetime Catholic school teacher Bernard Shero a jail sentence of 8 to 16 years for raping a former altar boy dubbed "Billy Doe." The judge threw out one charge against Father Charles Engelhardt, a bogus conspiracy rap, as unproven, but still hit the priest with 6 to 12 years in jail for sexually abusing the former altar boy.

The judged handed out the sentences even though a mandatory Commonwealth psychological exam had determined that neither defendant was a sexually violent predator. The judge tacked on five years of probation to each defendant's jail sentence.

It was a bizarre day in court. The proceedings featured defendant Shero rising in an unsuccessful attempt to debate Assistant District Attorney Enangelia Manos. Billy Doe didn't show, but his brother finally did, via a letter to the judge read aloud by the prosecutor. [During the trial, the jury had sent a note to the judge inquiring about the whereabouts of Billy's older brother].

But the low light of the day came when prosecutor Manos began testifying about a decades-old unproven allegation against Father Engelhardt that never made it before the jury, and was not in evidence in the case. That didn't deter prosecutor Manos from using the sentencing hearing to charge Father Engelhardt with a new crime. The prosecutor shouted out what she claimed the priest had allegedly said decades ago to a male relative, namely, "I want to fuck you up the ass!"

Classy. No wonder the proceedings left several female relatives of both defendants sobbing in court. That came to the attention the court crier, who ordered the sobbing relatives to leave, thereby calling even more attention to the situation.

The sobbing relatives weren't the only spectators to leave the courtroom in disgust. One veteran lawyer left muttering he didn't know how the prosecutor could sleep at night. Father James J. Greenfield, head of the religious order that employs Father Engelhardt, described the proceedings as "a punch in the gut."

D.A. Manos appeared to be aiming even lower. But to District Attorney Seth Williams, this was justice.

"This prison sentence sends a clear message to sexual assault victims in Philadelphia," Williams said in a prepared statement. "If you come forward, you will be heard. I would also like to compliment the jury for its hard work in carefully sifting through the evidence and coming up with a just verdict."

The judge who sent two innocent men to jail

In order to get up to the 9th floor of the Criminal Justice Center, where Judge Ceisler was holding court, spectators had their choice of riding in suffocating, overcrowded elevators that left people fanning themselves. Or hiking up nine flights of stairwells past prominent no-smoking signs, clouds of nicotine, and smokers puffing away with impunity.

Courtroom 905 was packed. Sitting prominently in the front row were the parents of the victim, and their lawyer for Billy Doe's civil suit against the archdiocese. All three were wearing green ribbons in support of abuse victims. Billy Doe was conspicuous by his absence.

Burton A. Rose was the first lawyer to address Judge Ceisler. Rose, who represented Shero, and Michael J. McGovern, who represented Engelhardt, had notified the judge in advance that they were going to make oral motions for extraordinary relief.

Rose told the judge the verdict was not justified by the weight of the evidence. He cited an abundance of reasonable doubt in the case, and said the guilty verdicts constituted a "serious miscarriage of justice."

The victim's story "makes no sense," Rose lamented. Billy Doe told conflicting stories and there were no corroborating witnesses or evidence, Rose said.

The judge quickly notified Rose that his plea was falling on deaf ears.

"I don't want to relive the whole trial," she said.

Rose continued talking about the unreliable testimony of Billy Doe, and his 23 drug rehabs in the past 10 years.

"The jury for whatever reason ignored evidence of reasonable doubt," Rose said.

The defense lawyer brought up Father Ed Avery, and the guilty plea that the former priest testified during the trial was bogus. This case should be retried, Rose concluded.

Next it was McGovern's turn. He talked about the discrepancies between Billy Doe's various accounts of the rape by Father Engelhardt. How Billy Doe first told an archdiocese social worker that Father Engelhardt anally raped him for four or five hours in the sacristy at St. Jerome's Church.

And then how Billy Doe, in subsequent versions of his story, kept changing the details. It wasn't anal sex, it was oral sex,  then it was mutual masturbation. It wasn't one incident, it was four incidents. The discrepancies in Billy Doe's various versions of the alleged assault should "shock the conscience," McGovern told the judge.

The judge clearly wasn't buying it. But she did say that one of the charges against Father Engelhardt, that he conspired with Father Avery to rape Billy Doe, didn't appear to have any evidence behind it.

Manos got up to dispute that. "They worked together, they lived together," she said of the two priests who lived at St. Jerome's rectory. Manos brought up the code word "sessions," saying that only the two priests used that word to describe sex with Billy Doe.

It didn't matter to the prosecutor that the "sessions" story line was suspect from day one. Or that the district attorney's own detectives found a far more likely origin for the word sessions, a word that both priests claimed they never used.

The use of the code word sessions was direct proof of a conspiracy, Manos argued. The defendants had a fair trial, they got to cross-examine the victim, and they lost, Manos said.

"They just don't like the verdict."

It was the judge's turn to rule.

The judge said the jury took their job "extremely seriously" and "they believed the victim." There were discrepancies in the victim's stories, the judge agreed, but "that alone does not require reasonable doubt." Especially, she said, because the victim's initial account to the archdiocese social worker came when Billy Doe was "ambushed and under the influence of heroin."

The looks on the faces of Shero and Engelhardt's family members spoke of stunned disbelief.

The discrepancies in Billy Doe's accounts, the judge continued, "does not shock my conscience."

But regarding the conspiracy charge, the judge ruled that the jury had made an "error of law" by finding Father Engelhardt guilty of conspiring with Father Avery. There was no evidence to back the conspiracy charge, the judge said.

So the judge announced she was dropping the conspiracy charge as unproven. That gave the Engelhardt camp some false hope. But then the judge said she would not grant the defense motion calling for a new trial.

The 66-year-old Engelhardt was left with three charges against him; endangering the welfare of a child, indecent assault against a minor, and corrupting the morals of a minor. Before the judge dropped the conspiracy charge, the priest was looking at a minimum of 6 to 12 years.

The 50-year-old Shero had five charges against him, including rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, endangering the welfare of a child, corruption of a minor, and indecent assault.  He was facing a minimum of 5 to 10 years.

Manos stood to read two victim impact statements. The first was from Billy Doe, who asked the judge to impose maximum sentences against these "these horrendous men.

Billy Doe claimed that after he was raped, for 14 years, he "tried to numb the pain" with drugs. 

"It never seemed to go away," he wrote. Then, he told the judge, he made the choice to publicly confront his assailants, and come clean to his parents about the reason for his drug addiction.

"It finally feels good to make my family proud of me,"Billy Doe wrote.

The relatives of the defendants looked like they were ready to vomit.

The next letter Manos read was from Billy's older brother.

The brother had given a statement to police, disputing many of the facts that Billy had claimed in his account of being raped by the two priests. During trial, the defense had implied they were going to call the older brother, a lawyer, to impeach Billy Doe. But the prosecution told the judge that the witness had not been properly served with a subpoena, and the judge agreed.

In his letter to the judge, Billy's older brother said that he never realized that the reason for his brother's bad behavior and drug addiction was that he had been raped as a youth by three predators.

"No one knew the root cause of his suffering," the brother wrote to the judge. The brother talked about how he had a "tenuous and grief-filled relationship for eight years" with Billy because of the drugs. But since Billy Doe came forward to accuse the defendants, the brother wrote, "I've seen a brand new individual."

Billy has a fiancee, and he's "working a steady job," the brother wrote. He told the judge how happy he was "to see my brother begin to flourish as a human being."

It was time for Manos to sum up the prosecution case for maximum sentences.

Manos accused the two defendants of "masquerading" as men of God. "They fooled everyone," she said. While Father Engelhardt was saying Mass and pretending to be a godly person, "he was taking a little innocent boy and ruining him," Manos said.

Shero, she said, was always complaining about his eye defects, "always playing the victim." Meanwhile, he was secretly fondling and violating Billy Doe, the prosecutor said. "How can these acts ever be justified?"

The two defendants were always "hiding the rotten evil inside," she said. "Their crimes are horrible." She talked about Shero grooming Billy, evidence that was in short supply during the trial, except when the prosecutor was making his closing statement.

Manos then brought up Brian Lyman, a cousin of Engelhardt's who was a character witness in the case.  The judge turned down a prosecution request to have Lyman testify about a supposed incident where the priest allegedly attempted to have sex with him.

Although the judge had not allowed the cousin's allegation to be made in front of the jury, Manos began testifying about all the alleged facts of the allegation like it had been presented as evidence. Perhaps she felt she had to refute Engelhardt's clean record, and psych report, so that's why she made a big deal out of the Lyman allegation.

Defense attorney McGovern got angry. The incident stemmed from 1983, McGovern said, and Lyman came forward decades later.

"This is so desperate," McGovern told the judge. "Every family has a nut."

But Judge Ceisler let Manos continue with her oratory.

That's when the prosecutor yelled, "I want to fuck you up the ass."

After that outburst, Manos talked about Billy Doe's decision to come forward.

"[Billy Doe] was forced to testify," she said. "He was forced to look evil in the face."

Manos asked for the maximum possible sentence.

Father James J. Greenfield is the provincial who leads the Wilmington-Philadelphia province of the Oblates of St. Francis De Sales, of which Engelhardt is a member.

As head of the province, Greenfield said, he has settled some 39 cases of past abuse.

"I've seen up close" the toll of sex abuse, plus "subsequent cover-ups," the priest told the judge. But this wasn't one of them.

Greenfield said he's known Father Engelhardt since 1979. "He is a generous and loving priest," he said. "I believe that he is innocent."

Regarding Billy Doe, "the jury believed him," Greenfield said. "I don't."

Father Greenfield tried to talk Judge Ceisler into giving Father Engelhardt probation. The priest could work in an oblates' facility in Maryland that treats "infirm, aged and demented" priests, Greenfield said.

It was the defendants' turn to address the judge.

Father Engelhardt stood and said that he had served as a priest for "close to 40 years" when he was falsely accused in 2009 by Billy Doe. The priest said he couldn't even remember who Billy Doe was when the accusation was made.

"I have no recollection" of the victim, he told the judge.

The priest talked about how he had taught hundreds of students every year at several high schools, and how he had served as a "moderator" or a link between Catholic school coaches and student athletes on soccer, baseball, basketball and wrestling teams.

"I'm very proud of my life's work," he said, holding back tears. "I have accepted this injustice," he said, believing that eventually "it would be righted."

There's a lot of pain and suffering in the world, the priest said, but he still holds on to his faith. And he still believes that pain and suffering "was not created by our God."

The priest, who looked fragile and haggard, sat down without ever raising his voice. McGovern asked for a cup of water for Father Engelhardt, who gulped it with a trembling hand.

The priest, McGovern said, did not pose a threat to the community. Father Engelhardt had already served four and a half months in jail since his conviction on Jan. 30.

"This is a man who should not spend another day in prison,"McGovern concluded.

When Bernard Shero stood to address the judge, he was clearly incensed at the way he had been characterized by prosecutor Manos.

"You wouldn't have been able to go through what I've gone through," he told the prosecutor. "That's really not fair," he said of the prosecutor's remarks that he was always hiding behind his handicap.

He accused her of "twisting the facts," and challenged her to respond.

"Go ahead," he told the prosecutor. "I know you want to say something."

The judge told Shero he was out of line.

"I'm frustrated," the defendant responded.

Shero reiterated his innocence. There was "absolutely no way I could do that," he said of the crimes he was convicted of.

Shero said before trial, he was offered several plea bargains to lesser charges, but "I couldn't do that," he said. He couldn't plead guilty to something he didn't do.

He then attempted to answer a question he's been wrestling with since 2009, when he was first accused by Billy Doe.

"Why me?" he said. "I'm a target," because of his bad vision.

The judge interrupted Shero, asking if he had a driver's license.

He said he did.

Then the judge read her sentences.

The courtroom erupted in tears. McGovern embraced Father Engelhardt one more time before the deputies took him away.

The families of the defendants were left with grief and anger.

Engelhardt's family was particularly puzzled by the judge's mixed decision on "Uncle Charlie."

"Judge Ceisler just showed her lack of intelligence and common sense by stating she believed [Billy Doe] said Tracey Boyle, Father Engelhardt's niece.

"Ultimately, she [the judge] proved she is a puppet for the D.A.," Boyle said. "First she stated she agreed with the jury's decision, yet disagreed moments later with the conspiracy charge given by the jury! So after removing the conspiracy charge, she went above the guidelines for her sentence. Unbelievable!"

Outside, on the steps of the CJC, Assistant District Attorney Manos was talking about how courageous Billy Doe had been when he testified against the defendants.

This reporter asked Manos if Billy Doe was telling the truth when he told the jury that it was the district attorney's office that hooked him up with his civil attorney, so he could sue the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for damages. The question was, was somebody in the district attorney's office getting a referral fee?

A smiling Manos gave a long rambling speech about the sanctity of the jury system, and how a jury of 12 men and women had believed Billy Doe and rendered a just verdict. A long rambling answer that had nothing to do with the question.

Tasha Jamerson, a spokesman for the district attorney's office, then announced she had no intention of replaying the trial, and that the time for taking questions from reporters was over.

As she walked away, I asked Jamerson a question that the district attorney has refused to answer for months, namely whether any prosecutor had a financial interest in the criminal convictions of Engelhardt and Shero.

"Absolutely not," she said.