PENNSYLVANIA
The Altoona Mirror
February 9, 2016
By Phil Ray (pray@altoonamirror.com) , The Altoona Mirror
JOHNSTOWN – A new sentencing date was set Monday for Father Joseph D. Maurizio Jr. of Somerset County, who was denied a new trial on charges that he sexually abused several Honduran children in an orphanage he helped support over the years.
U.S. District Judge Kim R. Gibson in Johnstown ruled the 71-year-old priest will be sentenced on March 2 for illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place, possession of sexually explicit photographs of a minor and using money raised for the ProNino orphanage in El Progresso to pay for sexual services from the children.
Gibson, in a 48-page opinion, rejected a petition from Maurizio’s Altoona attorneys Steven P. Passarello and Daniel Kiss asking for a new trial because, the defense charged, the government withheld an impact statement in which one of the young victims denied Maurizio sexually abused him, which was contrary to the boy’s testimony during Maurizio’s trial last September.
“I am somewhat perplexed by the opinion,” Passarello stated Monday afternoon in reaction to the Judge’s decision.
The judge, he said, agreed with almost every point the defense raised: that the government had withheld a statement that showed Maurizio was innocent and that the statement was “material” in that it reflected on the credibility of the government’s testimony.
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