Ag's Office Raids Monastery Where Priest Accused of Sex Abuse Lived

PennLIve
June 26, 2015

http://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2015/06/ags_office_raids_monastery_whe.html

Dan Dye (rear), deputy attorney general, walks with an investigator with the state Attorney General's Office as they collect evidence at the St. Bernardine Monastery in Hollidaysburg on Thursday, June 25, 2015. (Evan Sanders | Trib Total Media, Staff)

Agents with the Pennsylvania attorney general's office have seized documents and computers from a monastery where a Franciscan friar killed himself after he was accused of sexually abusing students at schools in two states.

The attorney general's office refused to comment on Thursday's raid at the St. Bernardine Monastery near Hollidaysburg, Blair County. Officials also declined to comment.

Sixty-two-year-old Brother Stephen Baker stabbed himself in the heart in January 2013, nine days after the Roman Catholic diocese in Youngstown, Ohio, settled abuse claims with 11 former students at a school in that state.

The settlement eventually led to claims by more than 88 former students at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, that were settled for $8 million last year.

A school spokesman didn't immediately return a message seeking comment.