PENNSYLVANIA
NBC 10
Three Franciscan friars have asked a judge to dismiss criminal charges that they didn’t properly supervise a suspected sexual predator accused of molesting more than 100 children, most at a Pennsylvania high school.
Blair County Judge Jolene Kopriva has set an April 27 hearing on the defense motions filed by attorneys for Giles Schinelli, Robert D’Aversa and Anthony Criscitelli, the Altoona Mirror reported Thursday.
D’Aversa, 70, Cristcitelli, 62, and Schinelli, 73, were ordered to stand trial on child endangerment and conspiracy charges following a preliminary hearing last April.
State prosecutors contend the friars either assigned or supervised Brother Stephen Baker when he served at Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown in the 1990s.
Baker fatally stabbed himself in the heart at the Franciscan’s St. Bernardine monastery near Hollidaysburg, which the defendants led from 1986 to 2010. Baker killed himself days after the Youngstown, Ohio, diocese announced in early 2013 that 11 students had settled claims they were molested by Baker while he worked at John F. Kennedy High School in Warren, Ohio, in the late 1980s.
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