Former Archbishop Ryan
president to stand trial

By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer

The former president and principal of Archbishop Ryan High School waived a preliminary hearing last week on felony charges stemming from his alleged theft of more than $900,000 in funds belonging to the school and his religious order.
The Rev. Charles Newman, 57, is accused of using a chunk of the missing cash to pay off a former Ryan student who the priest allegedly molested and furnished with alcohol and drugs in the mid-1990s.
In a brief March 19 court appearance, Newman waived his right to a presentation of evidence against him. Municipal Court Judge Marsha Neifeld then ordered Newman to stand trial on two counts each of theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception and theft by failure to make required disposition of funds, along with a single forgery count. All are felonies.
According to a Philadelphia grand jury indictment released publicly in December, Newman allegedly stole the money while he was president of Ryan, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s largest high school, from July 2002 to November 2003. Prior to that, Newman served nine years as principal of the school. He was a teacher there before that.
As president, Newman had access to accounts belonging to the school and the Order of Friars Minor, commonly known as the Franciscans, who serve on the school’s administrative staff and faculty.
A bookkeeper at the school suspected wrongdoing from Newman’s first day in the job when he allegedly instructed her to prepare two $4,000 checks payable to the Franciscans because, the bookkeeper said, Newman believed that the priests weren’t being paid enough by the archdiocese.
Over the next several months, Newman allegedly instructed the bookkeeper to issue many more checks to the Franciscans or individual members of the order. Newman also often took cash from the school safe or cash drawers and repaid it with checks written from school or Franciscan bank accounts that he exclusively controlled, the indictment states.
Staff at Ryan reported the suspicious transactions to the archdiocese, which in November 2003 began an internal audit of the school’s accounts. Newman allegedly admitted to misappropriating thousands of dollars and was dismissed from his position with the school.
A later third-party forensic audit of the Ryan accounts revealed that Newman allegedly paid out almost $332,000 to unauthorized recipients during his presidency. Most of the money went to Franciscans, while $19,800 in checks and cash was paid directly to 1996 Ryan graduate Arthur Baselice III.
On the heels of the third-party audit, Baselice in June 2004 filed a civil lawsuit against the archdiocese and many of its leaders claiming that Newman abused him sexually numerous times during Baselice’s junior and senior years at Ryan.
According to the lawsuit, the encounters occurred at the St. Pius X Friary adjacent to the high school. Newman allegedly used drugs and alcohol to groom the boy and abused him during an early 1996 trip to Denver, as well.
The suit further accused Newman of giving the teen cash to buy illegal drugs for both.
Baselice claimed that the abuse stopped upon his graduation when he told Newman that he had contracted a sexual disease. But Newman continued giving him money to buy drugs.
A state court ultimately dismissed the suit on the grounds of an expired statute of limitations.
Baselice, who had developed drug and alcohol addictions since his departure from Ryan, died of a drug overdose on Nov. 30, 2006. He was 28.
Notified by the archdiocese of the alleged thefts and sexual abuse, the District Attorney’s Office referred the Newman case to the grand jury.
In its own investigation, the grand jury learned that Newman also served as treasurer for the St. Pius X Friary. From July 2002 through November 2003, he allegedly wrote unauthorized checks on Franciscan accounts totaling $552,280. Most of the notes were made out to "cash" and were personally endorsed by Newman, the indictment states. Also, two checks totaling $34,200 were made out directly to Baselice.
Newman declined to comment on the allegations last week outside of the courtroom. He is free on 10 percent of $50,000 bail and living in a Franciscan retirement community in Wisconsin. He is banned from conducting any public ministry. A trial date has not been set. ••
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 or bkenny@phillynews.com