PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The Philadelphia rape trial of a Roman Catholic priest and a former Catholic school teacher has been postponed after a lawyer in the case had a death in the family.
The Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero are due back in court Friday to get a new trial date.
Their case has been severed from the high-profile trial earlier this year of a church official charged over his handling of abuse complaints. The Rev. William Lynn is appealing his landmark child-endangerment conviction while starting a three- to six-year prison term.
Engelhardt and Shero have pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting a former altar boy at a northeast Philadelphia parish in the 1990s.
Their accuser, a troubled 24-year-old policeman's son, is expected to be the key trial witness.
