Priest-abuse complaint reopened in Pa.

PHILADELPHIA -- Authorities have reopened a 2007 fondling complaint against a priest who taught at a suburban Philadelphia high school and is now the Roman Catholic bishop of West Virginia.

The complaint stems from Bishop Michael Bransfield's days at Lansdale Catholic High School in the 1970s. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia said it did not find the complaint credible at the time, and passed it on to Montgomery County authorities.

But the archdiocese said last week that the complaint has been reopened.

"The Archdiocese of Philadelphia promptly reported the allegation against Bishop Bransfield to the Montgomery County D.A.'s office in 2007. . . . The situation is again being reviewed by law enforcement authorities," spokesman Kenneth Gavin wrote in an email.

The development comes with the recently completed Philadelphia priest-abuse trial in which a witness testified that a priest who abused him told him that Bransfield was sexually involved with a young teen. The witness also said he was raped by the priest at Bransfield's beach house.

Bransfield, who has led the West Virginia diocese since 2005, says he wasn't home at the time, and denies ever abusing anyone.

The trial ended with Monsignor William Lynn convicted of endangering children as secretary of clergy, and the jury deadlocked on sex abuse charges against the Rev. James Brennan.

Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington disclosed in a sidebar conversation, made public since the June 22 jury verdicts, that Bransfield himself was under investigation for a complaint that stems from his teaching stint at Lansdale Catholic.

The statute of limitations may have been tolled, or stopped, when Bransfield left the state about 1980 to work at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., Blessington said.