NEW EGAN BOMBSHELL (Paid off perv priest and ignored victim: lawyer)

Edward Cardinal Egan resisted compensating an alleged victim of a pedophile priest while giving the clergyman as much as $17,000 to settle bank debts and pay for a defense lawyer when the cardinal was bishop of Bridgeport.  Court document reveal that the payment, made in 1989 after the Rev. Gavin O'Connor had been accused of molesting several boys between 1977 and 1985, was later condemned by the plaintiff's lawyer as a payoff intended to buy O'Connor's silence in the case pending against him and the diocese, the Hartford Courant reported yesterday.