PHILADELPHIA — An Episcopal bishop accused of covering up his brother's assaults of a teenage girl in the 1970s was experiencing selective amnesia and other phenomena he described in his own 1997 book about harboring secrets about clergy sex abuse, a church lawyer argued.

Bishop Charles E. Bennison Jr. is charged with concealing sexual abuse by his brother, John Bennison, a lay minister and later a priest at a California church where Bennison was rector.

On Thursday, the final day of a four-day ecclesiastical trial in a downtown hotel, attorney Ralph A. Jacobs read a passage from Bennison's book "In Praise of Congregations," stating that congregations that collectively repress memories about sexual or financial misconduct "results in ... selective amnesia about certain events."

In two days of testimony, Bennison, who now leads the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, said dozens of times that he did not recall dates, places and people who spoke to him about his brother's misconduct.

Citing earlier testimony from the victim, now 50, that Bennison never contacted her after the abuse to apologize or offer his help, Jacobs added that Bennison's book lists "resistance to reach out to the victim" as another symptom of withholding secrets about abuse.