JOHNSTOWN (PA)
The Tribune-Democrat
August 9, 2018
By David Hurst
The Altoona-Johnstown Roman Catholic Diocese and Third Order Regular Franciscans face a new lawsuit related to Brother Stephen Baker – alleging the parties recklessly and negligently allowed him to sexually assault a boy at two schools in the diocese, beginning when he was 10 years old.
On the heels of an $8 million settlement involving 88 other former students abused by Baker between 1992 and 2001, the latest lawsuit alleges Baker continued the pattern until at least the fall of 2003 with one boy, a fellow former Bishop McCort student.
According to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Cambria County, Baker – a onetime athletic trainer and religious studies teacher at Bishop McCort – began groping a youth identified as T.B. when he was a fifth-grade football player at St. Patrick’s school.
The allegations mirror dozens of others settled in 2014, contending Baker fondled the boy, slid his hand into his pants and, on later occasions later, had him remove his pants so he could manually stimulate him.
“In the summer of 2002, T.B. joined Bishop McCort’s football team but when (he) saw Baker at training camp, he quit,” Harrisburg attorneys Benjamin Andreozzi and Nathaniel Foote wrote in the lawsuit.
On one occasion afterward, the suit alleges Baker assaulted him in a training room after he fell down stairs on campus.
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