Ex-priest who helped report notorious abuser now charged with sex abuse from 1990s
William “Father Bill” Mannion, 62, of Sparrows Point, was arrested Monday and charged with second degree child abuse and multiple sex offenses.
Police said the alleged abuse occurred from approximately 1991 through 1994 in the 600 block of St. Agnes Lane, the address of St. Agnes Church. They provided no other details.
A man told his therapist that Mannion abused him starting when he was in second grade and continuing through fourth grade at St. Agnes School. The man said Mannion took him to the monastery, played Christian rock music and abused him using puppets from his religion puppet show.
The accuser said he served as an altar server at Mannion’s church. The abuse was initially occasional, but became more frequent into the fourth grade. He said he “felt that Mannion would single him out, telling [the alleged victim] that he was incorrect when answering questions in religious education then telling him to wait in the hallway and pulling him out of class.”
“Mannion told [the alleged victim] that [he] had to do these things or else God would punish [him] and his family, that [his] little brother would go to hell and his parents would be condemned to hell,” police wrote. “After the abuse, Mannion would also have [the alleged victim] say prayers and [he] felt like Mannion wanted him to say it as a penance.”
Mannion left the priesthood in the late ’90s and was formally laicized “for reasons unrelated to abuse” by the Vatican in 2004, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Baltimore said in an email.
https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/commu...TJG35M4QQ/
William “Father Bill” Mannion, 62, of Sparrows Point, was arrested Monday and charged with second degree child abuse and multiple sex offenses.
Police said the alleged abuse occurred from approximately 1991 through 1994 in the 600 block of St. Agnes Lane, the address of St. Agnes Church. They provided no other details.
A man told his therapist that Mannion abused him starting when he was in second grade and continuing through fourth grade at St. Agnes School. The man said Mannion took him to the monastery, played Christian rock music and abused him using puppets from his religion puppet show.
The accuser said he served as an altar server at Mannion’s church. The abuse was initially occasional, but became more frequent into the fourth grade. He said he “felt that Mannion would single him out, telling [the alleged victim] that he was incorrect when answering questions in religious education then telling him to wait in the hallway and pulling him out of class.”
“Mannion told [the alleged victim] that [he] had to do these things or else God would punish [him] and his family, that [his] little brother would go to hell and his parents would be condemned to hell,” police wrote. “After the abuse, Mannion would also have [the alleged victim] say prayers and [he] felt like Mannion wanted him to say it as a penance.”
Mannion left the priesthood in the late ’90s and was formally laicized “for reasons unrelated to abuse” by the Vatican in 2004, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Baltimore said in an email.
https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/commu...TJG35M4QQ/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
