Former North Catholic Teacher Completes Australia Prison Sentence for Sex Abuse

By Peter Smith
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
July 21, 2017

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2017/07/21/Brother-Bernard-Hartman-Pittsburgh-North-Catholic-sex-abuse/stories/201707220012

Brother Bernard Hartman, a former teacher at North Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, is expected to be released from an Australian prison this weekend and return to the United States after completing his two-year prison sentence for sexually abusing three children in that country in the 1970s and 1980s.

Hartman, 77, a member of the Marianist religious order, “will be resident in a non-Marianist facility, specializing in supervision of men with significant personal issues and/or court referrals,” said a statement from the Rev. Martin Solma, provincial for the Marianist Province of the United States. The facility will provide “24/7 supervision,” and he said Hartman would have “no external ministry or freedom of movement.”

Father Solma did not specify where Hartman would live, but he said it would not be in Pennsylvania, where Hartman once taught. Nor, he said, would it be in Ohio, where Hartman lived in a Marianist facility in Dayton between his abrupt removal from North Catholic in 1997 and his extradition to Australia in 2013 to face charges there.

Hartman joined the Marianists in 1958 and was a science teacher. He was not an ordained priest.

Hartman taught briefly at North Catholic in 1961 and in 1979. After several years in Australia, he returned for a longer stint from 1986 to 1997 at North Catholic, which was then located on Troy Hill.

When he was removed from the school in 1997, the Marianists did not tell the public that it was because of allegations it had received from Australia.

After a years-long investigation, Hartman was extradited to Australia in 2013 and was convicted in 2015 in Victoria County Court in Melbourne.

He pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault on two girls who were sisters of students at the all-boys Catholic school where he was teaching.

He was also convicted of one count of indecent assault and two counts of common-law assault on a young boy.

On July 24, 2015, Hartman received a three-year sentence, with the third year suspended.

After the Post-Gazette reported on Hartman's pending trial in 2014, the Diocese of Pittsburgh wrote to North Catholic High School alumni, asking any victims of abuse to come forward. One person told the diocese of being abused by Hartman. The diocese reported the case to the Allegheny County District Attorney's office, which attempted to contact the person but said the statute of limitations would have prevented prosecution.

Eighteen other people brought claims against seven other Marianists for alleged abuse by brothers who worked here between the 1940s and 1990s. Most of the alleged perpetrators are deceased or had left the order. Father Solma issued a statement in 2014 in which he apologized to the victims and other Catholics in Pittsburgh, confessing a “betrayal of the religious witness we profess and which you had a right to expect."

While having no public ministry, Hartman will still be a part of the Marianist order. “He remains a member of the congregation just as he remains a member of his own family,” Father Solma said this month in a statement. “We feel that ‘expulsion’, though punitive and satisfying the desire of some for retribution, is unwise. A living situation that is supervisory in nature is better for all concerned.”

Mairead Ashcroft, who was between ages 8 and 11 when she was abused by Hartman in Australia, said she’s still concerned about how Hartman will be monitored.

“I believe that religious leaders of all denominations who have been convicted of sexual crimes should be stripped of their ministerial titles which offer them the power of false trust in the community,” she said via email. “I worry that, despite my 17-year battle to have Brother Bernard Joseph Hartman arrested, charged and jailed, that an abuse of power may still be accessible to him when he is deported back to the U.S. I did not witness remorse in the courtroom nor over that 17 year period that I pursued his sentencing. I worry for the safety of the children of vulnerable parents.”

Ms. Ashcroft reported the abuse to Catholic authorities in 1999 and went public in 2011 out of frustration with the slow pace of the criminal investigation.

Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith