The Rt. Rev. Charles E. Bennison, Jr., Bishop of Pennsylvania, has expressed remorse for the emotional trauma inflicted on a teenage girl who was sexually abused by his brother at a California parish where Bishop Bennison served as the rector in the 1970s. But he maintains the charges against him “are not fair and are not true.”
 
A nine-member church court ruled unanimously in October that Bishop Bennison should be deposed from ministry in The Episcopal Church for failure to report his brother and to protect the girl.
 
“This was a terrible, monstrous sin,” Bishop Bennison told The Living Church. “I have always expressed remorse for my direct responsibility in this tragedy, especially hiring my brother as the youth director, inadequately supervising him and not thoroughly investigating the situation when it was first brought to my attention in 1976.”
 
On Nov. 12, Bishop Bennison’s defense counsel argued before an ecclesiastical court in downtown Philadelphia that its verdict and sentencing were flawed, and that its recommendation that the bishop be deposed was too severe.
 
Bishop Bennison expressed frustration with the ecclesiastical court process, which he said made it virtually impossible for him to reach out to the victim’s family during the trial.
 
“As witnesses we were sequestered and I was not able to speak to them during the trial,” he said. The nature of the trial meant a public expression of remorse would have been problematic to his defense, he said.
 
“Even though this was an ecclesiastical trial, it was an adversarial setting and there were attorneys involved,” he said. “As the respondent, I had to defend myself. If I had expressed remorse, it might have been seen by the court as an admission of guilt. During the hearing we were able to cite precedent from a previous case in which the respondent is instructed not to express remorse.”
 
The court may modify the deposition sentence to admonishment or temporary suspension. Lawrence White, the prosecuting attorney acting for The Episcopal Church, urged the court to keep its decision unchanged, saying that neither admonition nor suspension was commensurate with the gravity of the offence.
 
Bishop Bennison said new evidence has come to light since the trial and he intends to appeal the verdict once the final sentence is handed down.
 
“I love the church and I don’t want it to be unjust,” he said. “The Presiding Bishop repeatedly urged me to resign and make this all go away. That is the way that the church worked too often in the past. This is not just about me, it is about the integrity of the church.
 
“The charges are not fair and they are not true,” he said. “I don’t want to be remembered for something the court claims I did. This has been very costly, but no matter how it comes out, I’ll know I’ve done everything I could to make it come out right.”
 
Steve Waring
 
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