Apparently, Bishop Bransfield’s, of Wheeling WVA, name got mentioned in the Monsignor Lynn trial in Philly and having the bishop as the center of accusations of sexual misconduct in conjunction with another miscreant friend priest (guilt by association?).
Bransfield crossed the state line of Pennsylvania in 1980 when he went to work at the USCCB parish church, the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC. The Pennsylvania statute of limitation on the accusations against Bransfield froze in 1980.
Don’t hold your breath on justice though. It is Montgomery County where White, Relublican and Catholic are synonyms. The original accusations from 2007 against Bransfield got lost in e-mails in the County Prosecutor’s office there just like similar charges of evil got lost in the Sandusky Paterno Pedo State Cover Up. Democrats may not be less perverted than Republicans but the Republicans can sure cover it up better in Pennsylvania.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20120708_Review_of_2007_allegation_a_W_Va__bishop_had_fondled_a_Montco_student.html?c=r
Bransfield has been the leader of the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese since 2005 and an elected treasurer for the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. Before that, he spent more than two decades working at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington and rose to become its rector, a prominent post within church circles.A nephew, Sean Bransfield, is a vice chancellor for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Another relative, Msgr. J. Brian Bransfield, is a ranking officer at the U.S. bishops' conference.
Michael Bransfield had never been publicly accused of misconduct until his name emerged during the trial for Msgr. William J. Lynn and the Rev. James J. Brennan.Two men testified that they talked to or saw Bransfield during years they were serially raped and molested by one of his friends and seminary classmates, Stanley Gana.One of the witnesses said Gana regularly put him on the phone with Bransfield when Gana was serially abusing him in the 1980s. During one phone call, he said, Bransfield told him: "I'm going to have Stanley put you on a train and come down and see me sometime."
The second witness reported seeing Bransfield driving a carload of adolescent boys near a farm Gana owned in Northeast Pennsylvania.
"They're his fair-haired boys," Gana allegedly told the teen as Bransfield drove away. "The one in the front seat he is having sex with."
Prosecutors in the case also took aim at Bransfield after a priest from his diocese unexpectedly resisted a subpoena to testify at the trial. In the sidebar conference, Blessington told the judge that he believed Bransfield was behind the delay.
