PENNSYLVANIA
Wall Street Journal
By SCOTT CALVERT and KRIS MAHER
March 15, 2016
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced felony criminal charges Tuesday against three now-retired leaders of a Franciscan order in central Pennsylvania, saying they conspired to cover up a serial predator’s sexual abuse of dozens of students at a Catholic high school in Johnstown, Pa.
Special agents and prosecutors on Monday filed criminal charges against the three men—Giles A. Schinelli, 73, Robert J. D’Aversa, 69, and Anthony M. Criscitelli, 61—for allegedly taking part in a conspiracy to endanger the welfare of children, Ms. Kane said Tuesday.
Each of the three men is charged with one count each of endangering the welfare of children and criminal conspiracy. The charges focus on assaults at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown by the late Brother Stephen Baker, from 1992 to 2010.
The attorney general’s office said it spent two years investigating the allegations surrounding Mr. Baker, whose death in 2013 was ruled a suicide. Investigators took the matter to a statewide investigating grand jury in 2014. The grand jury heard witness testimony and reviewed more than 200 exhibits, the attorney general’s office said.
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