Man, 24, recounts alleged sex attacks by priests, teacher

HIS LOW, CALM voice and composed demeanor belied the fact that the young man was talking in open court of having been raped by two Catholic priests and a former Catholic-school teacher.

For more than two hours Tuesday, the dark-suited man, 24, sat just feet from a Philadelphia Common Pleas jury, recounting events that he alleged began in 1998 when he was a fifth-grader and 10-year-old altar boy at St. Jerome Parish, in the Northeast.

Speaking without tears but with bitterness in his voice, he explained to Assistant District Attorney Mark Cipolletti how he had been raised to view churchmen, such as those on trial for allegedly assaulting him.

"They are servants of God," said the tall, thin man, who lives and works in Florida, and whose name the Daily News is withholding. "They represent God. They are almighty. You don't question them. They're like another parent, just holier."

He told jurors that the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, 66, ex-teacher Bernard Shero, 49, and defrocked priest Edward Avery, 70, turned out to be the tormentors responsible for his slide into drug addiction beginning at around age 14.

Engelhardt and Shero are on trial together, facing a battery of sexual-abuse charges. Avery pleaded guilty last year and is serving a 2 1/2-to-5-year state-prison sentence. He's scheduled to testify against Engelhardt and Shero, who have pleaded not guilty.

The alleged victim testified that Engelhardt began trying to seduce him after catching him drinking communion wine following an early-morning Mass. He said that the priest asked about his sexual preferences and showed him gay and straight pornography magazines during that first encounter.

During the second encounter, also inside the church, Engelhardt ordered him to undress and proceeded to fondle him and perform oral sex on him, the man testified.

"He said I was becoming a man, I did a good job and God loved me," the man told the jury.

In 1999, he said, Avery told him that he was aware of the "sessions" that he had had with Engelhardt and that their sessions would soon begin. He said that Avery twice took him to a church storage closet and sexually abused him in various ways. "He kept saying everything was going to be OK ... It's what God wanted," the man said of Avery, who he said played music from a small boom box during the first alleged assault.

Shero, his sixth-grade English and homeroom teacher, sexually assaulted him in the spring of 2000, after offering him a ride home from school, the man testified.

He said that the attack took place in the back seat of Shero's car in a parking lot. As a teacher, Shero often touched and spoke with students inappropriately, the man testified.

After each attack, he told no one, due to fear and guilt, he said.

In time, he said, he became "darker" and depressed, got hooked on drugs and was kicked out of two high schools before graduating from Northeast Preparatory School.

He said that he has been in more than 20 drug-rehab programs, has been arrested several times and still has an open drug case.