CATONSVILLE (MD)
Baltimore Sun [Baltimore MD]
October 8, 2026
By Maggie Trovato
A Baltimore County jury Thursday found a former Catonsville priest guilty of one count of child abuse and four counts of second-degree sex offenses in the sexual abuse of a 10-year-old St. Agnes Catholic School student more than three decades ago.
William “Father Bill” Mannion Jr., 64, was accused of grooming the boy in 1994 and using religious teachings and the threat of eternal damnation to manipulate him into performing sexual acts in the church rectory after religious education classes.
The jury reached its verdict Thursday after a four-day trial in Baltimore County Circuit Court. The state dropped the remaining charges against Mannion.
Dates were central to the defense throughout the trial. Defense attorney Chris Luber argued that the former student’s accounts placed the alleged abuse before Mannion arrived at St. Agnes in July 1994.
Prosecutors, however, argued that the six-month period when Mannion and the boy overlapped at the school and parish provided the opportunity for the abuse to occur.
“The opportunity was there for this abuse to happen,” Assistant State’s Attorney Stacy Amparo told jurors during closing arguments.
Luber urged jurors to construct their own timeline of the allegations and said the discrepancies amounted to reasonable doubt.
“It adds up to one thing,” Luber said, “and that’s reasonable doubt.”
Around the same time he is accused of abusing the 10-year-old, Mannion reported allegations of sexual abuse against John Joseph Merzbacher to the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Merzbacher, who was convicted of rape and ordered to serve four life sentences, died while incarcerated in 2023.
Mannion left the priesthood in the 1990s and formally removed himself from the clerical state in 2004 “for reasons unrelated to abuse,” according to the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Closing arguments
Before the jury left the courtroom to deliberate Thursday, Amparo talked about the alleged victim’s credibility. She said that the central details of the man’s allegations remained “strong and consistent.” He could even remember the musty smell of the towel that Mannion handed him after the first incident of abuse, Amparo said.
Amparo also spoke about testimony given Wednesday by clinical social worker Crimson Barocca. Amparo said Barocca testified that typically, the central details of abuse, rather than timelines, remain strong for survivors of abuse.
“At the end of the day, how many of us remember exactly what happened in third grade?” Amparo asked.
Decades after the abuse, Amparo said, the former student had to put together all the pieces like a puzzle. “[He] is telling you the truth,” she said.
Amparo also spoke about the power dynamics between Mannion and the boy. She said that the boy grew up in a religious family and that people depend on religious leaders for guidance. “This defendant was God on earth to him,” she said.
This, along with Mannion being fun and young, made it “all the more confusing” for the boy during the abuse, Amparo said.
Luber spent much of his closing arguments speaking about timelines. He brought up the differences in the former student’s reports to investigators and his therapist.
Luber said the man told his therapist and alleged in a pending lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Baltimore that the abuse occurred between first and third grade.
He said that the man told an investigator with the Maryland Attorney General’s Office that the abuse occurred between second and third grade. He told a Baltimore County detective that the abuse occurred between second and fourth grade, Luber said.
All these timelines take place before July 1994, when Mannion arrived at St. Agnes, Luber said.
“I encourage you to construct your own timeline,” he said to the jury, later adding that there is clear reasonable doubt in the state’s case.
Luber also spoke about a letter that Mannion wrote to the pope and archdiocese, asking to be removed from the clerical state. The letter included information about struggling with celibacy and wanting to be a “hero” as a young priest, according to prosecutors.
While prosecutors said the letter gave insight into Mannion’s heightened sexual desires during his time at St. Agnes, Luber said the letter is not evidence of child sexual abuse.
Part of the letter, Luber said, is about Mannion finding his soulmate, wanting to get married and wanting to be able to continue attending church.
“He bore his soul,” Luber said, “And this is evidence of child sex abuse?”