Source: Pittsburg Post Gazette

Actions by attorney general’s office represent one of the broadest-ever drives to hold Roman Catholic church accountable for clergy abuses of minors.

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — One of his Franciscan superiors knew Brother Stephen Baker had sexually abused a minor and ordered a psychological evaluation in the early 1990s. The evaluation came back with a caution — to keep Baker away from one-on-one contact with children, and no overnight trips with them.

Even so, the Very Rev. Giles A. Schinelli admitted under oath to a grand jury that he assigned Baker to work at Bishop McCort Catholic High School here in 1992, and Baker had plenty of one-on-one contact with students.

Baker became an athletic trainer there despite lacking any professional qualifications, and under the guise of offering massages or other treatment, Baker handled boys’ bare genitals with his hands and digitally penetrated their anuses, among other offenses.

A statewide grand jury, saying that he enabled a nearly two-decade rampage of abuse that claimed at least 100 victims, recommended that Father Schinelli and the two who succeeded him as head of a Hollidaysburg-based Franciscan province face almost unprecedented felony charges.

Each is charged with one count of endangering the welfare of children and criminal conspiracy, which are third-degree felonies.

The charges represent one of the broadest-ever drives to hold Roman Catholic higher-ups to account in any American criminal court for the sexual abuse of minors by those under their supervision. And they’re the first religious-order superiors to face such charges.

To date, only a Missouri bishop and a Philadelphia monsignor have been convicted of cover-up-related charges, with the latter on appeal.

Filed by the state attorney general’s office, the charges were recommended by the same statewide grand jury that released a report two weeks ago blasting the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown for decades of covering up sexual abuse by more than 50 priests and other church leaders.

But the Altoona-Johnstown report resulted in no criminal charges because of the statute of limitations. In this case, however, the grand jury alleged a conspiracy from 1992 to as recently as 2010 by leaders of the Blair County-based Province of the Immaculate Conception of the Franciscan Friar, Third Order Regular.

The charges were filed Monday in Blair County Magisterial District Court in Hollidaysburg.

Baker committed suicide in January 2013 amid growing revelations of his multi-state trail of ravaged young lives. His body was found with wounds from two knives and surrounded by suicide notes, the report said.

Charged are:

• Father Schinelli, 73, who was minister provincial from 1986 to 1994.

• The Very Rev. Robert J. D’Aversa, 69, who was minister provincial from 1994 to 2001 and removed Baker from Bishop McCort because of a credible allegation of sexual abuse but reassigned him to other ministry with access to youths, according to the grand jury.

• The Very Rev. Anthony M. Criscitelli, 61, who was minister provincial from 2002 to 2010 and continued to allow Baker unsupervised access to children, according to the grand jury.

None of the three, according to the charges, ever called law enforcement authorities on Baker.

The three live out of state and are expected to be arraigned in the coming days.

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