Man Sues Allentown Diocese, Hellertown School, Says Teacher Molested Him
By Laurie Mason Schroeder
A York County man who claims he was sexually assaulted by a Hellertown Catholic school teacher in the 1970s is suing the Allentown Diocese and others in the latest of a trickle of new lawsuits based on a potential legal loophole around the statute of limitations. Mark Beaky, 59, says he was 13 when Lawrence Haftle, then a teacher at St. Theresa of The Child of Jesus Catholic School in Hellertown, sexually assaulted him. Beaky claims that Haftle, who died in 2010, also gave him drugs and alcohol when he was a teen. Named along the with diocese in the suit are the school and St. Theresa of The Child of Jesus Church in Hellertown. Beaky is demanding a jury trial and unspecified monetary damages. Beaky attended St. Theresa from 1971 to 1975, from fifth to eighth grades, and was a member of a church-affiliated Boy Scout troop that met in the church basement, the suit states. Haftle was Beaky’s homeroom teacher and instructed him in other courses, according to the suit. “He was known as the ‘cool’ teacher, dressing fashionably, having long hair and employing liberal teaching methods, in an otherwise strict and overbearing Catholic school,” Beaky’s attorneys, Richard Serbin of Altoona and Natalie DiAntonio of Baltimore, said in the suit. According to the lawsuit, Haftle took Beaky on frequent car rides during recess in which they smoked marijuana together and the teen would return to school intoxicated. The excursions were “open and obvious” but school officials did not intervene, the suit states. Haftle invited Beaky on a “weekend getaway” at a farm, the suit states, during which Haftle provided the teen with drugs and sexually assaulted him. The assaults continued, the suit says, until Haftle was arrested and jailed on a drug charge. (The Morning Call was unable to independently verify the charge.) According to his obituary, Haftle never taught again and went on to own a pet-grooming business in Emmaus for 15 years. Beaky said Haftle’s actions caused him problems that lasted throughout his life, including a feeling of low self-worth that led to led to drug addiction, mental health issues, employment struggles, homelessness and imprisonment. Pennsylvania court records show that Beaky was arrested more than two dozen times between 1989 and 2014 for crimes including robbery, forgery and possession of drug paraphernalia. Beaky’s attorneys assert in the lawsuit that school and church officials knew or should have known about Haftle’s actions, but kept the information secret to limit the diocese’s legal exposure and protect the church’s reputation. Though the allegations come long after the statute of limitations for seeking civil recourse for sexual assault in Pennsylvania expired, Beaky’s attorneys are relying on a potential loophole created in August by the state Superior Court, which allowed a similar lawsuit, based on new information from the 2016 grand jury report on the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, to move forward. In that ruling, a three-judge panel gave a woman’s lawsuit against the diocese the green light even though it was filed well beyond the statute of limitations, which gives a person until their 30th birthday to file a civil case alleging abuse from childhood. The defendants, three priests and the diocese, appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which agreed in March to review the decision. Allentown Diocese spokesman Matt Kerr said Bishop Alfred Schlert, the current head of the diocese, ”has always been transparent about the issue of abuse of minors.” A 2018 statewide grand report identified more than 300 predator priests and 1,000 victims. Haftle, who was not a priest, was not named in the grand jury report. Serbin said the report didn’t go far enough. “On the eve of the release of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report the Diocese published the names of 46 priests that they determined were priests ‘credibly accused’ of sexual misconduct with a child,” Serbin said. “What about all of the teachers, employees and volunteers that the Bishop of the Diocese of Allentown knew were molesting children? Doesn’t the public have a right to know the identities of all individuals known to have sexually violated innocent children?” Beaky’s attorneys said in the lawsuit that church officials conspired to hide the names of non-cleric child predators from the public. “These practices ... created the misperception in the mind of the plaintiff and his family that he was safe with nuns, teachers and priests in general and with Haftle in particular,” the suit says. Beaky’s is the third suit filed this year in Lehigh County Court against the Allentown Diocese that points to previously unknown facts that came out in the 2018 grand jury report, including a May complaint by Berks County state Rep. Mark Rozzi, who said he was sexually abused by a priest in the 1980s, when he was 13 years old. This story has been updated to reflect a quote from the plaintiff’s lawyer. Morning Call reporter Laurie Mason Schroeder can be reached at 610-820-6506 or lmason@mcall.com
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