PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A Roman Catholic religious brother who taught from 1986 to 1997 at North Catholic High School in Pittsburgh is facing trial in Australia on multiple charges of beating and molesting four children in that country more than 30 years ago.
A Melbourne court this week found sufficient evidence to order Brother Bernard Joseph Hartman to stand trial in April 2015 on 18 charges of abuse.
He returned to Australia in 2013 — two years after one of his accusers first went public — to face the charges. But his superiors with the Marianist Province of the United States first learned of accusations against him in 1997, when they removed him from his teaching position at North Catholic in Pittsburgh and sent him to a treatment center, according to the Rev. Martin A. Solma, provincial for the Marianist Province of the United States.
“He never returned to educational ministry and was assigned to internal ministry under a safety plan,” Father Solma said in a statement.
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