PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive
By Steve Marroni | smarroni@pennlive.com
When she was a teenager, Stephanie Fessler was sexually abused by a member of her York County church.
It was a place where she was supposed to feel safe, but it was the authorities within that church who not only failed to protect her, but they covered up the abuse, she claims.
And according to a lawsuit Fessler filed against the Jehovah’s Witness church in Spring Grove, had church elders contacted the authorities as they were legally obligated to do, she would have been spared more sexual assaults from the same woman.
While her abuser, Terry J. Monheim, pleaded guilty back in 2012 in York County Court, a lawsuit Fessler filed against Monheim and the church is going to trial Tuesday in Philadelphia.
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