Suspect turns case against priest

Associated Press

SAN JOSE, Calif.

Will Lynch is looking for justice in an unusual way. Charged with savagely beating the priest he says molested him as a child, he plans to try to use his trial to publicly shame the Rev. Jerold Lindner in court and call attention to clergy abuse.

Law experts say he faces an uphill battle. But priest-abuse victims are cheering him on and offering to donate to his defense fund. Several dozen supporters marched and waved signs Friday outside the Northern California courthouse where he was arraigned on an assault charge.

“Somebody needs to be a face for this abuse, and I’m prepared to put myself on the line,” Lynch told The Associated Press in the first interview since his arrest last month. “There’s nothing they can take from me that they haven’t already taken.”

Lynch is accused of luring Lindner to the lobby of a retirement home in May and beating him bloody in front of horrified witnesses.

The 43-year-old has said he will plead not guilty, but he did not enter a plea during a brief hearing Friday before Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Jerome S. Nadler. Another hearing is set for next month.

Lynch accuses the 65-year-old Jesuit priest of sexually abusing him and his younger brother in 1975 during weekend camping trips in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The boys, 7 and 4 at the time, were raped and forced to have oral sex with each other while Lindner watched, Lynch said.

Lindner has repeatedly denied abusing anyone and has never been criminally charged. He hung up Wednesday when the AP called him to comment.