OHIO
Ohio.com
By John Harper, Northeast Ohio Media Group
on May 22, 2015
NORTHFIELD CENTER TOWNSHIP, Ohio — The sentencing of a former teacher and school board president on 15 child porn charges has opened old wounds for parents and former students at St. Barnabas School and church in Northfield Center.
Decades of child abuse at St. Barnabas and other catholic schools came to light 13 years ago when the Rev. Daniel McBride, the only priest indicted in a sweeping grand-jury investigation of sex-abuse complaints in the Cleveland Catholic Diocese. McBride was sentenced to three years’ probation for having sex with a teen prostitute last year
The diocese issued a statement saying McBride’s case was “a personal matter and was never connected with the exercise of his priestly ministry.”
Now the Rev. Ralph Wiatrowsky of St. Barnabas has asked a judge to reconsider sentencing former Nordonia Hills school board President Steve Bittel to prison after 67 child porn files were found on his computer. And the letter has some parents outraged.
Angela Mitchell was a student at St. Barnabas in the 1980s, and while she was never a victim of sexual abuse, she says she knows others who were. She is one of 1,600 local parents who have joined a private Facebook group to coordinate efforts asking the Diocese of Cleveland to reconsider Wiatrowsky’s job.
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