Former Catonsville priest found guilty of sexually abusing former altar server

A Baltimore County jury on Thursday found former Catholic priest William Mannion Jr. guilty of sexually abusing a Catonsville Catholic school student in the 1990s.

The case has drawn broad interest among Catholics in part because the ex-priest had once been a notable advocate for victims, helping bring down a notorious child rapist before prosecutors accused Mannion of similar crimes.

The jury of eight men and four women deliberated for about an hour before breaking for lunch and later notifying Judge Dennis Robinson Jr. they had reached a verdict. Mannion was handcuffed and taken into custody. He had been on home detention since his arrest last year.

“You know I didn’t do this,” Mannion, 64, told his wife, who was seated in the gallery.

Mannion had been on trial all week after a 42-year-old former student accused him of pulling him out of class more than a dozen times when he was a young child and assaulting him in the St. Agnes Church rectory during the school day.

The former priest who later married faces substantial prison time for his five felony convictions.

On Thursday morning, the prosecution and defense presented their closing arguments. In their summation, prosecutors acknowledged there were some discrepancies — the dates of the alleged crimes may not add up — but asked the jury to convict Mannion anyway.

When the alleged victim disclosed the abuse to his therapist, he said it occurred between first and third grades. But he later told a Baltimore County Police detective that the abuse occurred between second and fourth grades. On the witness stand at the trial this week, he testified that he only realized the discrepancy after Mannion was arrested last spring.

Defense attorney Christopher Luber zeroed in on the confusion about dates, which persisted throughout the four-day trial, as proof of reasonable doubt. Luber told the jury this was partly why they needed to find his client not guilty.

“Mr. Mannion was not there,” Luber said. “He did not commit these crimes.”

Mannion was assigned to Baltimore County’s St. Agnes parish in July 1994 and immediately established a reputation as a popular young priest. He was in his early 30s, and the other priests assigned to the parish at that time were elderly.

Prosecutor Lisa Dever said during her closing argument that the former student and altar server may have gotten his dates wrong. But she stressed that his account has been consistent since he first disclosed the alleged abuse to family on Easter Sunday in 2019 and that his otherwise specific memories of his suffering are visceral and real.

“If something traumatic happens, will you remember the calendar date, or the details of the nightmare?” Dever said.

She told the jury that Mannion started grooming the man immediately after he arrived at St. Agnes. The man and the boy would talk about sharks, sports and music, she said.

The man and his mother both testified this week that Mannion gave him a shark tooth necklace that summer, and an August 1994 photo presented as evidence during the trial shows him wearing it.

Dever also asked the jury to closely read a letter Mannion wrote to Pope John Paul II in 2001, requesting to leave the priesthood. Baltimore County investigators obtained the letter from the Archdiocese of Baltimore during their investigation.

He writes to the pope that he had a drinking problem, struggled to fulfill his vow of celibacy and was desperate to be popular after hardly dating as a teenager. He acknowledged other sexual activity, including with another seminary student, that appeared to violate church teachings.

“It was secretive, hidden and dark,” he wrote. “I refused to process the meaning of such feelings.”

Mannion later recalled affairs he had with a parochial school teacher and a parishioner and says he got caught up in an addictive pattern of life. He does not discuss child sexual abuse in the document, but Dever argued he didn’t have to. She said the letter speaks to his state of mind around the time the alleged abuse occurred.

“That’s where he was in his life,” she said. “Is it so far-fetched to believe he would choose a young boy?”

Luber said prosecutors used the letter to humiliate Mannion.

“Go after him for whatever, but that is not evidence of child sex abuse,” he said.

He also stressed that the man who accused Mannion of abuse included details in his account that seem implausible. Luber said Mannion would have needed to walk the man back and forth past the principal’s office to exit the school, and the school principal at the time testified she never saw it happen.

But Dever praised the man and his account in her closing to the jury, ending her remarks by commending the man for his courage to testify.

“How brave he was to do that,” she said. “This is the first step toward facing his demons and taking back his life.”

Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 14.

This story has been updated.