Members of a sex-abuse victim support group picketed the headquarters of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania Tuesday to protest the reinstatement of Bishop Charles E. Bennison Jr., who had been suspended nearly three years for concealing his brother’s sexual abuse of a minor.
“It’s heartbreaking that he has been returned on a technicality,” said Karen Polisir, president of the Philadelphia area chapter of the Survivors’ Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP). She was joined by two SNAP members from Lancaster County who were abused as youths by Roman Catholic priests.
In 2008, a church trial court ordered Bennison defrocked and removed as head of the five-county diocese for mishandling abuse by his brother about 35 years ago. However, an appeals court ruled last month that the church’s statute of limitations had expired on the matter, and ordered Bennison restored to his position.