PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat
Sandra K Reabuck sreabuck@tribdem.com
JOHNSTOWN — A Franciscan friar who had ties to Bishop McCort Catholic High School decades ago has been accused of sexually abusing boys while he was a baseball coach and religious teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Warren, Ohio, in the in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Brother Stephen Baker, now living in the Hollidaysburg area, was identified as the abuser by two men who spoke about the abuse at a news conference this week in Ohio. They and nine other men settled claims against the school, the Diocese of Youngstown and the Third Order Regular of the Franciscan Friars in October.
According to published reports, the two men said that the sex abuse took place mostly when they played baseball for the high school, where Baker was the coach and trainer.
Baker, now living at St. Bernardine’s Monastery, also was a religion teacher and a trainer on the baseball and football staffs at Johnstown’s Bishop McCort Catholic High School in the late 1990s and in the 2000s.
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