PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune-Review
By Bill Zlatos
Published: Wednesday, May 14, 2014
The scope of one of the largest sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh grew Wednesday with the disclosure that 19 people have made 23 allegations of abuse by members of a religious order at the former North Hills Catholic High School.
The Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the diocese, said 18 of the alleged victims are men and the other is a woman. The latest Marianist brothers being accused of abuse are Brother James Kline, who taught at North Catholic from 1940 to 1947; Brother Joseph Binder, who taught at North Catholic from 1961 to 1966, 1975 to 1976 and 1979 to 1989; and Brother Julius May, whose service date at the school is unknown. Kline died in 1997, Binder in 2000 and May in 1970.
Asked how the diocese could not have known about such expansive abuse at one school, Lengwin responded, “I don’t know how you wouldn’t know or would know. A lot of people were able to hide their immoral behavior.”
The scandal began on March 20 when the diocese learned that Marianist Brother Bernard Hartman, 74, a former science teacher at North Catholic, is awaiting trial in Australia on charges he molested four students at a Catholic school there in the 1970s and ‘80s.
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