Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/07/2005 | Priest: Silence ordered on abuse: "When the Rev. James Gigliotti told church officials in the early 1980s that a Northeast Philadelphia priest was molesting boys, he remembers receiving a stern warning.
'This comes from the highest authority: You're to keep your mouth shut,' Gigliotti said an assistant chancellor told him.
The Philadelphia Archdiocese quickly removed the accused priest, the Rev. James J. Brzyski, from his parish in the Fox Chase section.
But the archdiocese did not tell parishioners the reason. Nor did it report Brzyski to police.
With his conduct a secret, Brzyski remained a welcome guest in parishioners' homes. A former altar boy said this meant Brzyski kept abusing him - for years.
'I was raped by the time I was 13,' said John Delaney, a father of two who works as a roofer. 'I don't have any religious beliefs anymore because of what he did to me. I have no faith in anything anymore.'
Brzyski's run of alleged attacks took place in the late 1970s and early '80s. Ten men have said he assaulted them as boys during his six years of active service as a priest. That would make him one of the worst known offenders in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
Three of his accusers have told The Inquirer that Brzyski plied them with candy, ice cream or alcohol before assaulting them - in rectories, in their homes, in his car, in a house at the Jersey Shore. Two say he molested them in the sacristy, the room near the altar where priests don their vestments.
Even so, the church did not identify him publicly as an abuser until this year, in a brief notice published June 23. It said only that Brzyski and six other priests had been defrocked for 'misconduct involving minors.'
After Brzyski left the church, he worked as a computer technician in Philadelphia. He lived for a time in East Falls, where he incorporated a talent and modeling agency, as well as a children's birthday party business, out of his home, public records show. It's unclear how much business, if any, his companies did.

He once told a neighbor that children loved it when he wore a Barney costume.

By 2002, Brzyski had moved to Virginia. That year, a 17-year-old filed a criminal complaint accusing him of attempted sexual battery, a misdemeanor. The teenager said he had dozed off from drinking at a cookout at Brzyski's house and awoke to discover Brzyski groping him in his underpants.

Brzyski filed a countercharge, accusing the teenager of kicking him and trespassing.

In court, both charges were withdrawn. Court papers don't explain why, and Brzyski's Virginia lawyer, Steven Shames, has declined to comment.
Why did no one call the police about Brzyski 20 years ago?

The answer is complicated.

"We were just so disturbed to find out that this creature was out there among young boys, and we kind of felt guilty," said the mother of one Brzyski accuser. "We should have gone to the police back then, and it would have stopped. Being good Catholics, we didn't do that."

Gigliotti said, "I think we'd all go back and say we should bring the police in right away."